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This isn't true in my experience. I've witnessed plenty of people in wealthy US suburbs that stock bottled water at home and even stock up on vacation. They claim it's for the taste and purity.
I don't know about purity but the taste can indeed be better than tap.
Many people have become familiar with the flavor of plastic, and learned to associate it with “purity” or “freshness” or “quality” or whatever.
See also: * Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793888 * Microplastics found in 90 percent of table salt https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18248471 * Microplastics Are Blowing in the Wind https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19672514 * Microplastics found in supermarket fish, shellfish https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245133 I think people…
Assuming there’s a lack of toxic effects because a human has not yet named any is fallacious. Safety is inherently impossible to demonstrate with certainty.
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1. The link you provided suggests that some bottled water comes from Municipal sources, ie. it is tap water. This would logically imply that the standards for bottled water are 2. The original article you are commenting on suggests that bottled water contains more microplastics than tap water.
Municipal water has to get to your house though. How clean it is at the plant doesn't really mean much if you're in an area with bad pipes (and in many places they are).
Hell, in my county this information is easily available online and in libraries and is broken down by measurements in the processing plant vs measurements in the distribution network. http://www.fultoncountyga.gov/images/stories/WR2/2017/CCR_20...
This won't directly tell you if your pipes are bad (and Atlanta does have some areas that used lead pipes from the county supply to the home) but it's a pretty good indicator of the water quality in my area.
If you're really concerned, it's almost always a better investment to get your tap water tested and fix the pipes than it is to buy bottled.
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we should start calling bottled water "plastic water"
Is microplastics what give cheap water bottles that particular off-flavor?
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Assuming there’s a lack of toxic effects because a human has not yet named any is fallacious. Safety is inherently impossible to demonstrate with certainty.
But they never said that microplastic had "no" toxic effects, just no immediately visible ones.
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I don't know about purity but the taste can indeed be better than tap.
“Better” taste is subjective. Many people have become familiar with the flavor of plastic, and learned to associate it with “purity” or “freshness” or “quality” or whatever.
In NYC I always drink bottled water, where I’ll happily drink potable tap water in most places.
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In Bali, Indonesia (and many developing countries) you have no choice. Drinking tap water is also health hazard in some countries.
In Bali, Thailand and many other places in SE Asia, you can get water that comes from local treatment plants (it usually looks like this[1]) instead of "brand" bottled water (like these ones[2]), the former is almost always bottled locally (at the nearest water treatment plant, they are ubiquitous in SE Asia even in regional areas, sometimes they are subsidised by governments), as a result the water tends to stay in…
https://m.alibaba.com/product/137674491/Water-Vending-Machin...
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Plastic bottled water is not bought because it is higher quality. People buy it because it comes in a disposable container.
In Bali, Indonesia (and many developing countries) you have no choice. Drinking tap water is also health hazard in some countries.
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I mean, maybe to you it's a placebo effect, but I know I can at least smell the chlorine in my tap water... which I suppose isn't strictly "taste" but basically the same for the point of the discussion.
A lot of bottled water comes from municipal water plants (aka tap water). That Penn & Teller YouTube link even has a section showing this, though you only need to go to the supermarket and look closely at the fine print of all the different brands of bottle water. You'll quickly find a lot are tap water.