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Bottled Water Can Be Harmful in Many Ways

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Bottled Water Can Be Harmful in Many Ways Heather Johnson Rogue Community College 10/30/2013

Bottled Water Can Be Harmful in Many Ways Clean fresh water is essential to our survival. The quality of our drinking water is of utmost importance to all of us. Is the drinking water available to us today actually safe? The huge bottling companies play on the fears that our tap water may be contaminated. Many of us take it for granted that we have water available to us at every corner. However, the convenience of bottled water is not worth the destructive outcome on the environment or our wallet When I was a little girl I never worried about where the water I drank came from. We lived out in the woods and we had a fantastic well. Neighbors down the road used to come over to our home and fill up containers of our water. I thought to myself how strange it is that they don’t like the taste of their water. It wasn’t until I got married and moved to Southern California that I realized how lucky I was to grow up with such great tasting pure water. I hated the taste of the water so much that I turned to sugary sodas and juices instead of water. I would go down and buy water but it was inconvenient to have large jugs of water all over the house. Every restaurant I ate at I would ask if they had bottled water or tap. I only lived in California for a year before I moved back to Oregon. However, during that time I became very aware of the taste of water and with all the water-borne diseases talked about in the news, I developed a fear of tap water. Peter H Gleick (2010) explains that the United States (US) has worked hard to provide the best public water system in the world. Not only is it managed and tested regularly, they have very strict federal and state regulations. The public are provided test results on our tap water yearly. The

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