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I remember Flint every time I see a Reddit crusader make the claim that bottled water is no better than water from the tap.
by acuozzo 2y ago
I remember Flint every time I see a Reddit crusader make the claim that bottled water is no better than water from the tap.
- Clubber 2y agoBottled water is no better than water from the tap*. *Except in Flynt. Bottled water also has around a 1600x markup.
- acuozzo 2y agoFlint, MI is hardly the only case of this happening in the 21st century.
- Clubber 2y agoAware
- vundercind 2y agoNever lived somewhere with tap water you can smell, I guess?
- alkonaut 2y agoIf you have competent government bottled water shouldn't be better than tap. I prefer tap because I find bottled tastes too little.
- acuozzo 2y agoHow could anyone know if their state government is competent? What if it's mostly competent, but the agency in charge of the water supply is the bad apple that spoils the whole bunch?
- margalabargala 2y agoHow could anyone know if the for-profit corporation selling them water is competent? If a bottled water company decided they could save a tiny amount switching to a plastic type that was legal but might give you cancer in 10 years, do you trust them not to do that? Anyone making that decision is thinking short term. By the time the harm becomes public they've enriched themselves and left. Government is less likely to knowingly poison you, and is probably about equally likely to unknowingly poison you.
- acuozzo 2y agoIs anyone involved in the Flint, MI crisis in prison right now? Private companies are not immune from consequences. I agree that it's still possible to be poisoned by bottled water, but there are a greater number of incentives in place to lessen the likelihood of it happening.
- yongjik 2y agoThe problem is that it's the job of the government to ensure that private companies meet their consequences. So, if you cannot trust government, you cannot trust private companies to not poison you either. I guess it's possible to have governments break down just enough to screw up the local water supply while not quite rolling in the bed with multinational companies yet, but I doubt such an arrangement would be stable for long.
- alkonaut 2y ago> How could anyone know if their state government is competent? One way of knowing would be that you can see trustworthy water testing. That there are consequences (political, legal) for public officials when there is wrongdoing. That society seems to function. How would you know a company bottling water isn't incompetent?
- int_19h 2y agoIf you're concerned about this kind of thing, the only rational way to go about it is to test your water regularly (whether you drink from the tap or buy it bottled). Everything else is basically putting your trust in a bunch of random people whom you don't really know.
- binary132 2y agoWelp, time to build my own water lab
- Galatians4_16 2y agoTime to croudsource your water monitoring {1} 1. https://hackaday.com/2022/04/02/monitoring-water-quality-using-lots-of-sensors-and-machine-learning/ https://hackaday.com/2022/04/02/monitoring-water-quality-usi...
- BurningFrog 2y agoWith competent government, many big problems would disappear!
- matheusmoreira 2y ago> If you have competent government That's the biggest "if" I've ever seen.
- Galatians4_16 2y agoThat's an oxymoron. You might temporarily have competent individuals in government, but the organization as a whole is not incentivized for competence. Same goes for corporations, especially bigger ones.
- biotinker 2y agoIt really depends where you are. Every municipality has different water. If you're downstream of a bunch of 19th-century dye factory locations, you may be better off with bottled water. If your tap water is of high quality, bottled water is likely worse due to microplastics from the bottle.
- RajT88 2y agoChicago had awesome tasting tap water when I lived there. It was like drinking straight from the lake in the spring.* *may not be wise
- itsanaccount 2y agoAs someone within the Chicago sphere who now lives on an artisean perched aquifer well, I'm guessing you can't taste chlorine. (Jokes aside yes Chicago water is phenomenal and Geneva, IL is even better. Take a tour some day or try out the local brewerys that use that water. https://www.geneva.il.us/516/Water-Treatment-Plant https://www.geneva.il.us/516/Water-Treatment-Plant)
- bayindirh 2y agoWhen you run spring water through reverse osmosis and “add minerals for taste”, this is true. When you bottle spring water as it comes out of the spring, now that’s very different.
- david422 2y agoIs that because we assume that bottled water has more rigorous testing or ... ? Because seems like a failure at the top could cause just the same issues.
- whaleofatw2022 2y agoIronically, if nothing else, private bottled water would not be covered by state immunity.
- CivBase 2y agoTo be fair, most of the time they're correct - at least as far as US tap water goes. Events like this are remembered because they are remarkable, not because they are normal.
- IggleSniggle 2y agoThere's more checks in place to assure that your government water is handled appropriately. A corporation will sell you anything and then declare bankruptcy to let the owners profit off the fraud. A government can inefficiently check over and over again that the supply it is providing is pure. A corporation is only beholding to its shareholders, where inefficiency is always a negative, regardless of its positive externalities.
- cptskippy 2y agoThe water authority in every county I have ever lived publish annual water reports with extensive information about water sources, quality, and composition results. Do companies like Coke and Pepsi do that?
- Galatians4_16 2y agoIn some countries.
- froglets 2y agoBottled water is most often filtered municipal water anyway.