Hi,



i like to drink a lot of water. but i cant afford to buy bottled water everyday even though i would like to.



currently, i just fill up empty bottles with tap water. is that bad? i'm not sure if drinking too much tap water will cause health problems, you know with the excess flouride?



if anyone could help that'd be great! thanks!

I've drank flouridated tap water all my life with no ill effect whatsoever (and no cavities either until I was a grown up)



I currently drink Brita filtered water cause the tap water here tastes like turpentine. To bring it with me, I put it in a reusable water bottle. You should be more concerned about drinking out of used water bottles than the flouride because the "single use" plastics (i.e. bottles water come in) have chemicals that can leach out into the water, so you should get yourself a good reusable (i.e. nalgene) bottle.

eeek. thanks for the tip. i guess i didnt think about it that much before.

where would i buy a re-usable bottle?

You can get re-usable bottles in camping shops etc.



I'm not sure about the leaching, to be honest. I had a look around on the web and couldn't find any good evidence that it happened, most of the information on the web seems to be from one study of questionable worth (although please do contradict me if there are any out there!) Most of the problems I found with the water bottle re-use issue was that if people don't wash the bottles properly in between uses there is a risk of bacterial problems.



Here is one site from the New Zealand food safety authority: http://www.nzfsa.govt.nz/consumers/f...tles/index.htm

Actually, I don't like the type of plastic used in Nalgene... some studies show that it can leach dangerous chemicals into the water and they have stopped using that material to make baby bottles. Instead, I got a stainless steel water bottle from an online environmentally-friendly site. Can't remember which one.

I use filtered water - bottled water is too expensive.

I have a big pot type water filter & change the filter every 6 months

the water tastes really bad out of the tap wher I live

filtered tap water usually, I live near the coast so the tap water is kind of sketch.

Pthalates, perhaps?



I drink tap water, re-using Aquafina plastic bottles. Why would refilling such a bottle and drinking it right away be different from filling it and letting it sit for several months before consumption?



My water at home comes out of a well. It's a bit hard - need to get the softener serviced, probably time to replace the coconut shell carbon filter media.

I use brita filters but when at my parents' house with water which tastes fine, I drink out of the tap. I personally think we are being taken advantage of. A lot of bottled water is just from someone else's tap anyway.



Bottled water isn't necessarily any better and creates not only lots of waste, but wastes energy to package and transport. When many people don't even have clean water that is safe to drink, it doesn't make sense that many people are spending tons of money to package and ship water from one side of the country to the other when they can get it from the tap and filter if they find that necessary. From a great E magazine article

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?1125






Something from Grist on different kinds of plastic bottles http://www.grist.org/advice/ask/2004...les/index.html

http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnew...n_dioxins.html



ETA- the flouride in water issue is one that is hotly debated.

bottled water has a huge amount of waste associated with it. Especially if you buy the small bottles meant for on the go. For this reason I prefer tap water.

I remember when that first Grist article came out, didn't see the update. I've been reusing plastic water bottles mostly because I haven't come across an alternative to keep with me at home/work that is usably large -- at least 1.5L. Anything smaller and I'm spending half my time refilling it.

A while ago I bought a re-useable Brita water bottle. It has a filter built into the mouth piece so you can just fill it up with tap water and it filters it before you drink it.

Another vote for Brita-- it makes my tap water taste great!

I was nosey and looked up where you live. I thought they rejected putting fluoride into the water in Scotland a couple years ago. As far as I know Scottish tap water should be fluoride free, but I didn't research it so I could be wrong. (There are many other places in Europe and North America that are also either no longer adding fluoride to the water, or never started in the first place.)



Where I live you can go to the health Unit and pick up some stuff to do water samples. The health unit then tests your water for free for all kinds of crap. Mine is perfectly fine. It might be possible to do the same thing where you live.

Here in Phoenix, AZ, the tap water is DISGUSTING, especially if you're not used to it. Bottled water over here.

Wow, where did you get that from? That sounds really ideal for my situation. I'll go see if Brita has a website...!

I have a distiller and I use a brita. I would not use tap water here. It has chlorine in it among other disgusting things.



I would suggest buying a brita.

Another vote for tap water...

I can't bring myself to buy water that costs more than gasoline... and the points Thalia makes are excellent. Drinking bottled water is seriously contributing to the destruction of our environment. Yes, sometimes I worry about the chemicals they put in my tap water, but i think buying a brita or similar filtration system would be much cheaper and much less environmentally damaging that constantly buying bottled water.

I drink tap water. I like it best when it's tap water that's from a Brita water filter from the fridge, but I'll drink it straight, otherwise. I don't buy bottled water because 1) I'm too cheap to spend a buck on something that I can get free from a fountain or tap and 2) All the bottles add up to waste.

I think the bigger problem with reusing plastic bottles is that they are hard to keep clean. bacteria and mold can release toxins and make you sick.



I don't understand the whole part about re-using the bottled water bottles releasing toxins from plastic (unless I am misunderstanding). If the plastic is one that would release toxins when refilled, wouldn't it be releasing them all along, including before you bought the original bottled water?



Lots of things we do expose us to toxins, we have to weigh the relative risk with the alternatives. I don't fear plastic bottles for cold water, but I stopped cooking in plastic. (As the one article I linked to above, heat is a one way chemists do chemical extractions into a solution.) I don't know if I'm really preventing myself harm or not, but it's easy enough to use glass instead. I'd probably do myself a lot more cancer prevention getting off my rear-end and exercising as opposed to worrying about plastic containers. Oh well.



Another thing I learned from the article I linked to in this post is that bottled water is much less regulated than tap water. Bottled water can legally contain lots of crap that wouldn't be tolerated in tap water.



He ends the article with an important point:

I have a distiller and I drink either distilled water or when I'm at work I drink water from the Wellness Filter. I would not even consider drinking tap water with all the dangerous chemicals and cancer-causing crap that's in it.

There was a special on Free Speech TV that was called, "Messege in a Bottle". The guy said he researched over 103 different bottled waters and found only a couple were actually better than tap water {not to say that tap is good}. I myself have bought distilled bottled but I refill it with filtered. Then I read in "Drugs Masquerading as Foods" that plastic bottles have solvent residues from the sterilizing process that disrupt hormones and stuff. Also the sproutman wrote that there's a code on all plastic containers {on the bottom ususally} with a number within a triangle telling the leachability of the plastic. 1 is the best for normal bottles and 5 is for food grade containers which is the ultimately best, but 2 leaches alot and I'm too sure about the others. Filtered is probably the best, and distilled you have to be careful I heard because too much could leach minerals out of you. I guess filtered or spring stored in maybe lead free glass is the best. Then there's always the question of reverse osmosis, water spirulators, oxygenators, and filters like charcoal, UV light, ceramic, flouride removers and so forth. Just some thoughts.

i am a water junkie--but only drink bottled water...the tap water always made me sick...had a funny taste and a funny smell--i will never go back to drinking tap again--and i recycle all my bottles---i dont refill them.



peace and love



jenn

The reason I refill them is because there's less of the sterilizing agent in them than when it is produced, lead free glass is still the best to me.

In Western countries we have the advantage of having safe tap water. But there is a HUGE industry in bottled water, which is quite distasteful when you look at the facts. For about 10 billion dollars per year, sanitation and clean water could be provided to everyone on earth, which is only about a quarter of how much is spent on bottled water in Western countries per year. I think it's really sad that there are so many people in the world who do not have access to clean/safe water sources, and meanwhile in countries that do, we are spending millions of dollars on bottled water - which consequently is extremely destructive to the environment: all those single-use bottles ending up in landfill, and all the transportation of the bottles too...



I read an article recently that said if we wish to avoid all of the chemicals/bacteria in tap water, we would also need to wear a gas mask in the shower (as the steam omits them in big doses). Also, chemicals and bacteria are found in bottled water. So in the end, I don't think there's much benefit to drinking bottled water at all...



I use a water filter jug

A scientist stated in the 90's that the currency of the 21st century would be water!

my current tap water tastes terrible even after brita filtering, so i drink bottled water.

I buy distilled water, by the gallon. Only costs around $0.87. Anyone can afford that. I just don't trust tap water. There is more than just flouride in it.

I buy distilled water for making my daughter's bottles (I don't always have the time to boil water to sterilize it for her) and for my hubby and I we have an on-tap Brita water filter.

Virtually all water sources are not ideal, especially tap water since flouride and chlorine is added. The best option for someone who doesn't want to buy a $200 purifier is to get purified water (reverse osmosis) at the grocery store. Our Co-op for example, sells it for forty nine cents a gallon.