Water purity
Did y'all know that somewhere around 25%-40% of bottled water in the US is purified tap water? And did you know that some bottled water (both here and elsewhere) is contaminated?
A Guardian article notes that Coca-Cola's brand of bottled water, Dasani, is purified tap water, and that the "purification" process Coke has been using in the UK ends up adding twice the legal limit of a carcinogen called bromate. Any increase in cancer risk due to Dasani is probably small, but the problem was sufficient to get the UK to take all Dasani off store shelves. I don't know whether there's bromate in the US version of Dasani as well; it's possible US legal limits are different, or it's possible that Coke uses a different process in the US.
The NRDC provides an extensive article about bottled water that notes:
While most of the tested waters were found to be of high quality, some brands were contaminated: about one-third of the waters tested contained levels of contamination—including synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic—in at least one sample that exceeded allowable limits under either state or bottled water industry standards or guidelines.
The gist of the article is that purity standards for bottled water are actually lower than for tap water in the US.
Meanwhile, in almost entirely unrelated news (but still on the theme of adding impurities to water), Danish artist Marco Evaristti has painted an iceberg red. Said Evaristti, "We all have a need to decorate Mother Nature because it belongs to all us. This is my iceberg; it belongs to me."
