[icxa]

Careful having extreme stances on things. Packaged water keeps many people alive during times of natural disasters or crises. Volunteers flock in and one of the first items brought in is bottled water. It was a lifeline for many people during the Flint water crisis. Finally it serves an overall utility of giving people another choice at the vending machine. It sounds silly to you and me as well, but it has a real impact on public health.

[koolba]

It’s a fine choice if your local water source is truly not potable, but for the vast majority of the western world that’s not the case. On the contrary, the majority of tap water that people can drink for effectively free is of higher quality and testing standards than most bottled water.

[fingerlocks]

The FDA website says the exact opposite. The standards for bottled water are much higher than municipal tap.

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/bottled-water...

[koolba]

Not quite. From that link:

> Each time EPA establishes a standard for a contaminant, FDA either adopts it for bottled water or finds that the standard isn’t necessary for bottled water.

> In some cases, standards for bottled water and tap water differ. For example, because lead can leach from pipes as water travels from water utilities to home faucets, EPA has set its limit for lead in tap water at 15 parts per billion (ppb). For bottled water, for which lead pipes aren’t used, the lead limit is set at 5 ppb.

So it could go in either direction though leans toward tight coordination. Enlightening to know there is more scrutiny there.

That aside, the horrible taste alone should be enough to dissuade people with a known safe alternative from drinking bottled water.