Recently, a patient asked me what I think of the tap water here in Marion, noting that many of her friends refuse to drink it, and choose instead to drink only bottled water.
In fact, I had the water at my house tested by a private company a few years ago, and the report came out quite favorably. (I don’t recall the name of the company that did it, and have no endorsement of a particular company in this regard). I think getting the water in your home tested periodically is not a bad idea for anybody to do. It’s also possible to get a good quality water filter for your home if you want to ensure the purest water possible. Again, I have no particular brand to endorse in this regard, so if this interests you, do your own research.
What I do wish to specifically comment on today is how awful bottled water is for you.
In these United States, where even common sense can be discarded after a clever enough marketing campaign, companies used advertising in the 1980s to get Americans to start buying bottled water en masse. A heretofore freely available resource became something that millions of people were now willing to pay for, despite no evidence that it was any better than the stuff they could freely get from the faucet in most cases.
This was a stroke of marketing genius, but like many such strokes, it has had detrimental effects on our health. Partly due to this uptick in bottled water, our oceans are now filled with plastic, and, increasingly, so are we.
Unless your municipal water supply is truly contaminated (think Flint Water Crisis, for example), you are almost certainly better off sticking with it than replacing it with bottled water.
