Tap water more closely regulated than bottled water, GAO says

Dan DeLong/Seattle P-I file

Federal regulation of tap water is more stringent than that of bottled water, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported Wednesday.

The Environmental Protection Agency regulates tap water, while the Food and Drug Administration oversees bottled water. The FDA’s standards “generally mirror” those of the EPA, with the notable exception of DEHP, which is an organic compound used in the manufacture of polyvinyl chloride plastics, the GAO said.

“Specifically, FDA deferred action on DEHP in a final rule published in 1996 and has yet to either adopt a standard or publish a reason for not doing so,” it said.

Also, there are “key differences” in the agencies’ authorities over tap and bottled water, the GAO said. “Of particular note, FDA does not have the specific statutory authority to require bottlers to use certified laboratories for water quality tests or to report test results, even if violations of the standards are found.”

States often have bottled-water requirements that are more stringent than the FDA’s, “but still are often less comprehensive than state requirements to safeguard tap water,” the report said.

Finally, the EPA requires public water systems to provide more detailed information about water quality than the FDA requires of bottlers, the GAO said.

The main “so what” of all this is that many people apparently drink bottled water because they believe it’s better than tap water. Over the past decade, Americans have, on average, doubled their consumption of bottled water, the GAO said.

I personally wonder about people who buy bottled water when they already pay to have high-quality water delivered to every sink in their house, but what people do with their money is their business. The problem is that bottled water is an environmental issue.

About three-quarters of the water bottles produced in the United States in 2006 were thrown away without being recycled, the GAO said. The report noted that these bottles made up less than 1 percent of the nation’s total municipal waste, but it seems to me that’s still a lot.

The GAO also pointed to a recent peer-reviewed article that found the production and consumption of bottled water is much more energy-intensive than the production of public drinking water, although it accounts for a small share of total U.S. energy demand.

Aubrey Cohen