# Bottled water, why? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 24, 2009, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bottled-water-why/504081 "2009-07-24T04:06:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bottled-water-why/504081/101 "2009-08-21T19:50:36Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > According to your standars, maybe US tap water is good enough. But we have different standards, because we try to protect the health of the people and not the profit of the companies. Yes, because our municipal tap water systems are run by huge private companies whose profits must be protected. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bottled-water-why/504081/102 "2009-08-21T21:18:37Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Yes, because our municipal tap water systems are run by huge private companies whose profits must be protected. :rolleyes: Are you telling me that with all the mantra of “private companies do it better!” that’s repeated in the US, your main water companies are publically owned and have not been sold to private companies?? For major cities, not some backwater little village? ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bottled-water-why/504081/103 "2009-08-21T21:36:47Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Are you telling me that with all the mantra of “private companies do it better!” that’s repeated in the US, your main water companies are publically owned and have not been sold to private companies?? For major cities, not some backwater little village? I’m sorry, you appear to have confused one particular political faction with an entire country. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2009, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bottled-water-why/504081/104 "2009-08-22T01:22:26Z")
Every place I’ve lived in the US has had very drinkable tap water. That’s in West Texas and the Southwest, but particularly Honolulu. The Hawaiian capital has possibly the cleanest tap water in the country. As I recall, it’s all from some sort of natural aquifer – and virtually free; they said the water bill pretty much covered just the cost of pumping it to your home. ---
**Author:** ![Meyer6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@Meyer6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meyer6)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2009, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bottled-water-why/504081/105 "2009-08-22T04:09:38Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Maybe you have a different attitude there, but to us, the level of pollution necessary to make a river combust is unimaginable. I think that what we call a heavyily polluted river would be minor to clean river in the US. This simply is not true. Water pollution is just a rampant in many parts of Europe as it is in North America, and serious efforts to clean up rivers began at around the same time in both areas. The Rhine and it’s tributaries were famous subjects of environmental overhaul in the 70’s because they were so heavily polluted. Cites: [BBC ON THIS DAY | 1 | 1986: Chemical spill turns Rhine red](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/1/newsid_4679000/4679789.stm) (referring to a 1986 spill of 30 tons of pesticide into the Rhine) “The spillage has reversed 10 years of painstaking work to clean up the Rhine, so grossly polluted by industrial expansion in France, Germany and Switzerland that fish disappeared and it was too dangerous to swim in.” [Emscher - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emscher) (referring to the Emscher, a German tributary of the Rhine) “In the geographical centre of a vast industrial area of 5 million inhabitants, the river is biologically dead, as it was used as an open waste water canal since the end of the 19th century” Compare this to the Cuyahoga River (the famous river that caught fire), described in 1968: [Cuyahoga River - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River) “The reach from Akron to Cleveland was devoid of fish…Animal life does not exist.” Hmm, sounds similar. I’m not saying that pollution in American rivers is not a problem, but Europeans have had hundreds of years to pollute their own rivers and have only been seriously cleaning them up since the late 60s or early 70s, just like America. The idea that water, or anything else, in Europe is so much cleaner and healthier than anything in America _today_ is not really based in fact. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bottled-water-why/504081.md?page=5)