More and more people are questioning whether the water, and the package it comes in, is safe, or at least safer than tap water -- and if the convenience is worth the environmental impact.
Over the past two decades, people have increasingly been shifting to bottled water because they consider it safe, find it refreshing, calorie-free, convenient to carry around, tastier than some tap water and healthier than soft drinks.
Drinking-water may be contaminated by a range of chemical, microbial and physical hazards that could pose risks to health if they are present at high levels. Examples of chemical hazards include lead, arsenic and benzene. Microbial hazards, include bacteria, viruses and parasites, such as Vibrio cholerae, hepatitis A virus, and Crytosporidium parvum, respectively. Physical hazards include glass chips and metal fragments. Because of the large number of possible hazards in drinking-water, the development of standards for drinking-water requires significant resources and expertise, which many countries are unable to afford.
