The Rise and Fall of Bottled Water Quality

Though drinking bottled water may once have been favorable to your health and wellness, those days are long gone.

Not long ago, say 50 to 100 years past, bottled spring water was actually drawn from natural springs. It was bottled at the source in glass bottles and delivered to customers, first in horse-drawn wagons and, later, in motorized trucks. This spring water was naturally pure and pristine, as it had surfaced from underground through many layers of clay and sediment, after having spent dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of years below ground.

This segment of the bottled water industry is known as bulk water, typically packaged in five-gallon bottles. Practically all such bulk water companies were local concerns that served specific regions of the country, their fortunes tied to the hydrogeology of a pristine, private spring. This water was certainly safer and purer than municipal tap water at the time, that is, before the era of public water chlorination.¹ These companies were also in most cases small, family-owned concerns that worked hard to bottle high-quality, natural water and provide great service to build customer loyalty. Customers would swear by the quality of the bottled water they drank and consider it the best-tasting water the world over.

The Chlorination Revolution (1913-1941)

The public-health breakthrough that was the chlorination revolution almost killed the bulk water industry in the early 20th century. Suddenly tap water was safe to drink without fear of disease from any of the countless microorganisms it contained. But enough people disliked the smell and taste of chlorine, and remained unconvinced anything that smelled so bad could be pure, to keep the industry going—though at lower sales volumes than before. There was also the matter of taste preference in water, and these natural spring waters, as a function of their mineral content and freedom from additives, had a taste profile customers would swear by.

The Single-Serving Hydration Sensation

For bulk water companies, everything went rolling along steadily. None became giants, but they provided a good product and made a respectable living. Fast-forward to the 1970s, when a whole new hydration sensation hit the scene like the Bridgette Bardot of bottled water. French-born Perrier made a big splash with water in pear-shaped, single-serving glass bottles. The sexy bottles and carbonated water became all the rage. Young urban professionals (yuppies), in New York and LA in particular, embraced the new product, which before long became hipper and to drink in bars than sodas or cocktails.

Single-serve bottled water, also known as packaged water, was soon taking a big bite out of the bulk water business. Since most bulk water companies were small, and they were scattered across the country, they lacked the consolidated clout to respond to packaged water competitively. But when packaged water also started taking a big bite out of the soft-drink business, Coca-Cola and Pepsi woke up.

It wasn’t long before a wide variety of single-serve packaged water options, foreign and domestic, lined bar refrigerators, health-food store shelves and, eventually, whole aisles in grocery stores. For the most part, packaged water is processed, bottled in large water factories, and bears little resemblance to bottled-at-the-source springwater of days gone by.

The Soft Plastic Bottle Takes Over

Surely you’ve noticed over time that soft plastic bottles have replaced glass bottles—more than 80% of them to be exact. The nature of the plastic keeps changing, as each iteration eventually has proven to contain toxic petrochemical byproducts that leach into the water inside.

Today, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the material of choice, since it’s thin, pliable, cheap, and light. As with previous plastics, the packaged water industry and FDA deem this material safe. As with all prior plastic bottle materials, however, PET is suspect. Research shows that chemicals that may lead to endocrine-disrupting effects leach into the water in bottles made from PET. How long the contents remain in the PET bottle and the temperature at which it’s stored determine the rate and magnitude of leaching. Besides phthalates, which are known carcinogens, compounds such as antimony may also contribute to the endocrine-disrupting effect of water from PET containers.²

Any benefits of consuming bottled water, whether it’s labeled drinking water, purified water, mineral water, natural-source water, or spring water are offset by the fact that it’s in a PET bottle stored at room temperature. One hour after it sits in that PET bottle, it’s not pure anymore.

Reading Between the Lines on Bottled Water Labels

As for labeling practices, the packaged water industry has resisted all attempts to make it list the contents of the water on the label, and the FDA has gone along meekly. Indeed packaged water bottlers can and do say anything they like on the label. The notion that the water comes from remote mountain springs or glaciers is usually ridiculous. Packaged water labels are designed to deceive. One company whose label promoted their pristine, natural spring source was ultimately found to get its water from a well under a toxic waste site.³

The packaged water industry has also resisted putting a bottling date on the label. This is important because the longer the water sits in the bottle, and the higher the room temperature, the more chemicals leach from the plastic into the water, including toxic phthalates.⁴ If there were microorganisms in the water when it was bottled (there always are), after a few weeks on the shipping pallet or store shelf at room temperature, the concentration of microorganisms can expand many times over. If you knew when the water was bottled, you probably wouldn’t buy it, which is exactly why the packaged water industry has lobbied so hard to keep you in the dark.

The Bottled Water Industry Shake-Out

Some regional bulk water companies—the moms and pops—have tried to enter the packaged water business to capitalize on regional brand equity. This is prudent, since packaged water today constitutes 80-85% of the bottled water market. A few regional players have made inroads, but most have been beaten back by a larger industry trend that has reshaped the packaged water marketplace.

Packaged water has grown exponentially to its current $112 billion/year, significantly more than the soft drink market. As this market has grown, consumer choice has taken a hit. Instead of local moms and pops, a few trans-national corporations are buying up all the water and dominating the market. Aquafina (Pepsi) and Dasani (Coca-Cola) are the #1 and #2 selling bottled waters in America.⁵ Both have been rapidly acquiring small, independent water companies, as have packaged water giants such as the Perrier Group (now owned by Nestlé Corp.), Danone Waters, and Suntory Marketing Group. Groupe Danone and Suntory have since merged and made a strategic alliance with Coca-Cola (presumably to go after market-share leader Aquafina). Where is all this headed? Will a few corporations eventually own the worldwide bottled water market?

The irony of all this for old-school (bulk) bottled water lovers is that Aquafina and Dasani are made from municipal tap water, as are most generic and store-brand bottles of water. Spring water is rarely bottled at the source anymore, at least not by the soda pop and packaged water monoliths. Instead, it’s loaded onto tanker trucks, laced with chlorine to kill the microorganisms, and hauled to huge water factories where it’s subjected to the same purification processes as municipal tap water. Spring by spring, family by family, the pure natural spring waters formerly bottled at the source are going the way of the tintype.

Bottled Water Quality Goes Out the Window

Most people think packaged water in single-serving bottles, whether it’s filtered municipal tap water or processed spring water, must be purer than tap water. They came by that perception naturally, as it’s been planted in their minds by the advertising and labeling practices of the packaged water industry for years. But don’t get fooled again.

For starters, the water produced by the packaged water industry is far less regulated than is tap water. The FDA regulates packaged water—and not very well. Over the years, they’ve shown time and again that bottled water is on their back burner at best, a low priority. The big-time water and soda-pop monopolies behind all the profits, and their industry association, the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), have successfully lobbied congress and the FDA for decades to squelch regulation of packaged water.

Packaged water of all types also is subject to far less testing than tap water. Tap water must be tested several times a week—and often several times a day—for purity. Independent government-certified laboratories also test tap water routinely to assure compliance. Bulk and packaged bottled water, on the other hand, are by law tested once a year! And the bottlers themselves do the testing. So much for objectivity and validity. What this means is the water in your bottle has 355-to-1 odds of being completely unlike the water they tested. On top of that, there’s no inspection or verification of the water’s source. Fun fact—for an ever-increasing number of packaged water bottlers, perhaps 70%, their pristine source is municipal tap water.

As for such designations as sparkling waters, natural sparkling waters, sparkling mineral waters, seltzer waters, club soda water, and so on—forget all claims to purity here. Neither the water in these products nor their sources are verified or tested for purity, since the FDA classifies them as soft drinks.

Soft Plastic Bottles Pollute More than the Water Inside

The sad truth is that most soft plastic PET bottles for beverages end up in landfills or floating out at sea. This is a highly polluting industry. Some 14% of all waste in U.S. disposal sites comprises drinking container bottles.⁶ To make matters worse, these plastics crumble into smaller and smaller pieces as a result of mechanical wear and exposure to ultraviolet light, producing microplastics, particles of plastics and polymers less than 5mm in diameter. Environmental microplastic contamination is an area of dire concern, as these plastics reach ever-increasing concentrations in oceans, rivers, lakes, streams, and land, and the amounts of them we ingest in food and water keeps creeping higher and higher.

Save the Planet. Save Your Money.

To top it off, packaged water costs about 1,000 times more than the same quantity of tap water. Inside your $4 bottle of fake glacier water is 1¢ worth of tap water. What you’re actually paying for is the PET bottle, the advertising, the label, transportation, and a boatload of profit.

All things considered, packaged water is one of the biggest rackets of the century, as well as an environmental and public health disaster. You’re being deceived, ripped off, polluted, and contaminated. Please don’t buy or drink water in soft plastic bottles unless you’re stranded in the Mojave Desert and dying of thirst. This water is NOT the pristine bulk bottled water of days of yore. On the contrary, it’s a lose-lose-lose proposition for your body, your budget, and your environment.

1. Chapelle, F. H. (2005). Wellsprings: A natural history of bottled spring waters. p. 15. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
2. Sax, L. (2009). “Polyethylene Terephthalate May Yield Endocrine Disruptors.” Environmental Health Perspectives, Volume 118, Issue 4, pp. 445-448. (Downloaded 2/3/2025 from https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.09012).
3. Ingram, C. (2006). The drinking water book: How to eliminate harmful toxins from your water, 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts.
4. Olson, E. D., Polling, D, and Solomon, G. (1999). Bottled water: Pure drink or pure hype? p. 8. New York: Natural Resources Defense Council.
5. Chapelle, F. H. (2005). p. 252.
6. Cohen, D. & Bria, G. (2018). Quench: Beat fatigue, drop weight, and heal your body through the new science of optimum hydration. New York: Hachette Books.