I buy bottled spring water. In spite of how heavy it is to drag home, I started doing this because I thought it was safer and tasted better. Now I'm having second thoughts. This article about the recent banning of bottled water in San Francisco made me take a second look at bottled water. Link... [1]

This website also had me wondering if I should turn back to tap.
Link... [2]

Bottled water is not safer...

The bottled water industry has created a misconception in the United States that bottled water is cleaner, safer, and healthier than tap water. In fact, both regulation and enforcement of bottled water safety is weaker than of tap water safety. Federal, state, and local environmental agencies require rigorous testing of tap water safety. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration regulates bottled water – if the water is sold over state lines, meaning up to 70 percent of all bottled water produced and sold within states is exempt from FDA regulation. Most food processing plants are not even inspected once a year and any safety testing of bottled water is performed by the companies themselves.2 A landmark study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found approximately one-third of tested bottled water brands violated, in at least one sample, an enforceable standard or exceeded microbiological-purity guidelines. The most common contaminants were arsenic and synthetic organic carcinogens.

Bottled water is bad for the environment...

Bottled water wastes fossil fuels and water in production and transport, and when the water is drunk the bottles become a major source of waste. It takes more than 47 million gallons of oil to produce plastic water bottles for Americans every year. Eliminating those bottles would be like taking 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.4 Each one of those bottles required nearly five times its volume in water to manufacture the plastic 5 and may have caused the release of nickel, ethylene oxide, and benzene.6 Then, rather than being recycled, 86 percent of them are thrown away.7 Breaking down these plastics can take thousands of years, while their components seep into our water supplies.

A comprehensive report of a study that prompted all this is at Link... [3]