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Pitfalls And Perils Of Drinking Bottled Water

by — Last updated: 2021-08-18 in Nutrition & Dieting

In much of the world, tap water is unsafe. Unfortunately, bottled water is not necessarily better. Here is what you need to be on the lookout for if you have to drink bottled water.

People who live in advanced and developed nations generally fail to appreciate the value of safe, germ-free drinking water straight from the tap, despite the fact that more than two billion people across the globe are forced to drink contaminated water. Although many Europeans eschew the taste of tap water and insist on mineral waters bottled from natural springs, the fact is that it is more than OK from a health standpoint to drink water straight from the tap most of the time in the United States, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, in the European Union, in many parts of the Caribbean, in Korea, and in Japan. 

Even in developed countries, however, broken pipes and flooded water treatment plants can make tap water temporarily unsafe to drink. In those cases, special precautions are necessary to ensure access to safe drinking water.

Boil Water Notices

In the United States, municipalities and municipal utility districts that run water supply systems keep daily check on the microbial content of tap water. From time to time, water gets contaminated when pipes break, when pumps fail, or when heavy rainfall causes sewers to overflow. When this happens, local television and radio stations will broadcast "boil water notices," if the problem is bacterial and can be fixed by simply boiling water, or warnings not to use the water at all in rare cases of chemical contamination.
 
If you are staying at a hotel, the management will be aware of this problem, and will probably make sure you have access to bottled water. Typically, boil water notices only last as long as it takes for a specific problem to get repaired, such as replacing a broken pipeline or a failed pump. Similar warning systems exist in the UK and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and Canada. 
 
If you get an infectious disease from tap water in developed countries, you almost have to have tried.

Montezuma Extracts Revenge Far Beyond Mexico

On the other hand, there are some countries where drinking the tap water is almost guaranteed to cause problems. So many visitors from the USA get E coli infections from drinking water in Mexico that the condition has come to be known as "Montezuma's revenge." (As a personal note, I have visited Mexico over 40 times and I have never had a problem while I was in Mexico, but I always get symptoms when I return to the States.) 
 
In other parts of Latin America you are probably fine drinking water from the tap in your hotel, but you may run into problems when you stay in rustic accommodations. 
 
St Petersburg in Russia has a notorious problem with the microorganism Giardia , the causative agent of a condition that causes intense diarrhea and a kind of flatulence in reverse known as "purple burps". This microbe also is found in clear mountain streams in the northwestern USA and in the Himalayas. Generally speaking, any place that isn't wealthy enough for sewage treatment plants doesn't have safe drinking water, either.

Problems With Drinking Water Aren't Limited To The Water You Drink

Travelers who assume that a little swish of contaminated water is acceptable make a serious mistake. Using bacterially infested waters to rinse out your mouth after brushing your teeth, or enjoying an ice cold beverage poured over ice made with contaminated water, is also a way to get infected. Rinsing fruits and vegetables to remove contamination doesn't work when the water used to rinse them is filled with microorganisms. So what can a traveler do?

Scared Of Contaminated Tap Water? Bottled Water Isn't The Perfect Solution

Most travelers opt for bottled water when they don't trust the local tap water. The problem is that, in many locations in the developing world, bottled water can also be contaminated.
 
Microbiologists studied 43 samples of 15 brands of bottled water bought in the markets of Ile-Ife, in southwestern Nigeria. What they found was not exactly encouraging to travelers.
 
  • All of the samples contained some bacterial contamination
  • 66 percent of samples contained multiple species of bacteria, but not in amounts what would make users sick.
  • 28 percent of samples contained Staphylococcus bacteria, half of those Staphylococcus aureus. This kind of contamination occurs when workers have placed bare hands into the water at some point in the bottling process, probably when bottles were filled by hand.
  • 27 percent of samples contained fecal coliform, E. coli ,which is to say, they were contaminated with human sewage or animal manures. This bacterium has the ability to form a biofilm that sticks to equipment so product is contaminated again and again. 
  • Three brands were consistently contaminated with Pseudomonas. This microorganism attacks people who have weakened immune systems.
Even when you use bottled water for drinking, washing, and brushing your teeth, there is no guarantee you will get an uncontaminated product. 
 
Problems with contaminated bottled water are not limited to Nigeria. An outbreak of Pseudomonas occurred in Germany when bottled water used in ICU wards was contaminated. Forty-one infants came down with Salmonella infections after the contamination of bottled water in Spain. Hospitalizations and deaths have been caused by bottled water contaminated with Cryptosporidium  in the United States.
 
How can you be sure your drinking water is safe wherever you go? No system is perfect, but here are some suggestions to increase your odds of having safe drinking water:
  • Buy drinking water in sealed bottles.
  • Internationally recognized brands, such as Nestle, are far less likely to be contaminated than local and unknown brands. Large, multinational companies have an investment in reputation that causes them to be concerned about product safety, as well as having to worry about product liability lawsuits.
  • If you see a vendor filling a bottle by hand, don't drink it without boiling it first. You may even be getting unsafe tap water or ground water.
  • Water purification tablets usually are not enough to prevent diarrhea, research has found.
  • Iodine is not especially useful for killing parasites in drinking water. Pregnant women and people who have thyroid problems should not use it for water decontamination.
  • Water filtration is highly effective against protozoal parasites (Giardia), moderately effective against bacteria (E. coli), and not very effective at all against viruses.
  • Solar purification works, but only if the sunlight is strong enough to heat the water to about 45 degrees C (115 degrees F) for two hours or more. Use a clear glass container to avoid contamination from plastics.
  • The best way to remove microbial contamination from water is to heat it to a rolling boil for one minute or longer. When boiling water is not possible, then it is best to use a combination of chemical decontamination and filtration, with products available from camping supply stores.

Whenever you travel to a new region, or move to a new location, inform yourself about the safety of the local tap water — and take steps to ensure that you have access to clean drinking water. Don't forget to follow your local news, either, because tap water can become contaminated at any time and you don't want to miss important notices. As climate change is having an increasingly marked impact on our daily lives, the World Health Organization estimates that fully half of all people on Earth will live in water stressed areas in the next few years. Floods and droughts both pose challenges in this area, and people living in developed nations are far from immune. Keep an eye on the situation and do what you can.

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