When All Hell Breaks Loose (32 page)

Bogus Bottled Bubbly?

Bottled water can be up to 1000 times more expensive than regular tap water and it may not be as safe. That said, commercially available bottled water might very well be what you store for your preparedness plan. In 2003, Americans spent more than $7 billion on bottled water that on average cost more than one dollar a bottle. Many bottlers claim that their product originates from some faraway spring or ancient glacier. If true, it's hard to say how many resources were squandered in the bottling and transportation of that liter of water from the French mountains, not to mention the estimated 1.5 million tons of plastic that are used to bottle 89 billion liters of water each year.

As if that's not obscene enough, many of these exotic waters have turned out to be bogus. A few years ago, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) conducted a four-year study that tested more than 1,000 samples from 103 brands of bottled water. The results? You guessed it: the researchers discovered that 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle. Sometimes the water was "purified" by reverse osmosis or some other means, and sometimes it wasn't. It gets worse. Under the same NRDC study, eighteen of the 103 bottled water brands tested contained "more bacteria than allowed under microbiological-purity guidelines."

Bottled water is actually defined as a "food" under federal regulations and thus sits under the wings of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for municipal water supplies, or tap water, and is required to uphold much stricter standards. Unlike bottled water companies, the EPA requires that local water treatment facilities provide users with a detailed description of the tap water's source, and the end results of any testing, including violations in contaminant levels. You might remember getting one of their little letters in the mail, profiling your water in minutia. While municipal water companies are required to test for harmful pathogens several times per day, bottled water companies are required to do so only once per week. I could go on about the testing differences. In addition, one-fifth of the brands tested positive for synthetic chemicals like
phthalate
, an unsafe chemical that finds its way into the water from the plastic container itself. The end result is that bottled water companies are not bound by the same standards as municipal water systems, thus they have the option of providing your family with water of a lower quality than you now receive from your kitchen faucet.

Storing Water for a "Rainy Day"

Storing water involves having water-safe container(s) in which to put water for future use. Not all containers are made from materials that you can safely store water in. If you don't have regular access to water sources where you live, stored water will be vital to your survival, both short and long term. Indigenous peoples used a fascinating variety of items to store and transport water such as gourds; seashells; ostrich eggs; animal stomachs, bladders, and intestines; bamboo segments; pottery; tightly woven baskets; and wooden containers hollowed out by fire. You will never fully appreciate how precious your virtually unbreakable, plastic camping water bottle is until you use one of these items on a cross-country field course. I routinely use gourds as canteens on some of my primitive living skills courses, and the stress involved in making sure they don't drop or bang into something and break is intense. You have but limited space within your body to store one of the most prized commodities for your survival. Having several modern, quality water containers, both fixed (due to their size) and portable, will be a
huge
asset to your peace of mind and potential survival. While you should be fully prepared to use modern container options, it should not weaken your adaptation muscles as to what could be used in your neighborhood to store and transport water in the event that your regular containment options are destroyed, stolen, or lost.