Dear Dot: How Safe is My Tap Water?

Dear Dot,

Is spring water safer than tap water?

– Julie 

Dear Dot,

Is using Brita water filters really environmentally friendly?

– Anneka

The Short Answer: Drink your tap water. Test it if you’re on a well. And if you want it filtered, that’s a reasonable choice — just don’t mistake it for a safety upgrade.

Hi Julie and Anneka,

In the 1970s, when Dot was a Younger Dot, I would line up, along with other thirsty kids, and drink from our elementary school water fountain, which sometimes featured a piece of chewed up gum. Gross? Yes. Unsafe? No. The water coming out of those spouts was — and remains — very safe. 

Those fountains have largely vanished, replaced by vending machines selling bottled water, or by large water coolers with a sleeve of small paper cups hugging their side. It’s a shame, really. Because not only was water free and plentiful — it also wasn’t packaged in a bottle made from oil. 

Which brings me, Julie and Anneka, to both of your questions, which I’m responding to simultaneously as each asks essentially the same thing: Is my tap water safe?

Dot is delighted to deliver a simple, unequivocal ’yes’ from no less an authority than James Salzman, distinguished professor of environmental law at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and author of Drinking Water: A History (available on ThriftBooks and Amazon). His opening line to me, essentially: he’s a tap water man, and always has been, despite the fact that bottled water companies have spent decades running what amounts to a quiet smear campaign against the stuff that comes out of your faucet.

Here’s why he’s unbothered. Tap water is regulated by the EPA. Bottled water falls to the FDA, and, Salzman says, the FDA is so underfunded that most in-state bottled water gets essentially no federal oversight at all; only water that crosses state lines even triggers a federal check. His bottom line: “If you’re drinking bottled water instead of tap water for health, unless you have some reason to suspect your tap water is bad, I think you’re wasting your money.”

And here’s the part that might genuinely surprise you: a lot of bottled water is tap water. Salzman explains that most bottled water starts as filtered municipal tap water, then gets a dash of what he calls “pixie dust” — minerals added back in, because fully distilled water tastes flat. Further, he adds, while the label shows a snow-capped mountain range, the bottling plant sits, in his words, some 2,000 miles from the nearest peak. It’s branding, not geography.

But let’s not pretend that very real tap water failures never happen. Salzman points to Flint, Michigan, as the obvious example. Canadian readers will remember Walkerton, Ontario, where contaminated municipal water led to several deaths after officials failed to test properly. What’s more, there’s an ongoing exception in many First Nations communities, some of which have lived under boil-water advisories for decades — a genuine failure, but not a reflection of the system overall. These cases are outliers, and they underscore why oversight matters. Bottled water, by contrast, relies largely on companies policing themselves to protect their own brand, with far less government oversight in the U.S.

What about microplastics? This one’s on a lot of people’s minds lately, understandably. Salzman was careful here: there’s no peer-reviewed data showing that microplastics in drinking water are any more of a concern than microplastics in food generally. It’s a reasonable assumption that plastic bottles — especially when left in heat — shed more microplastics than tap water does, but no study has actually confirmed it yet. His broader point: what we eat likely affects our health far more than what we drink.

Now, about spring water, Julie: it turns out “spring water” is a legal, regulatory label, not a health claim. To use the term, companies have to source water from an underground aquifer — and often that just means a company sinks a pipe into the aquifer rather than water actually bubbling up out of the ground on its own. Some spring water is also filtered or treated afterward, and some may not be spring water at all: Poland Spring is currently defending itself against a lawsuit that says that its spring dried up ages ago, and now what the company sells as spring water actually comes from ponds. Salzman’s verdict on the health case for spring water over tap: “It’s still water.” It sells an illusion of purity and nature, not safety.

In Canada, responsibility for safe drinking water is shared across federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments. Health Canada notes that “Quality standards for bottled water and tap water are similar. Both bottled water and municipally distributed tap water that meet or exceed their required health and safety standards are considered to be safe.” So spring water isn’t unsafe — it’s just not safer. It is, however, more expensive. And produces mountains of plastic waste. 

Private wells are a different story. Municipal safe-water regulations don’t apply to wells, so if you’re on one, get it tested regularly. Salzman noted that the right filter to have depends on local geology; wells in parts of the Southwest, for instance, often carry naturally occurring arsenic, so a basic Brita may not cut it, and reverse osmosis may be worth considering depending on where you live. (As a note, Dot’s copyeditor Laura noted that, when a blood test revealed high levels of copper, she began using a Berkey water filter. After a year, her blood levels were normal. Dot encourages Readers to make the best choice for their personal circumstances.) 

Now, Anneka, to your Brita question: If a Brita replaces individual plastic water bottles, that’s a clear environmental win — filtered tap water in a glass or stainless-steel bottle is about as eco-friendly as drinking water gets. My research suggests that Brita filters do a solid job on standard contaminants but a mediocre one on microplastics, and the filters themselves are made of plastic, so they’re not footprint-free. Still, if using one keeps you off bottled water, you’re solidly in the “better than” category. 

Professor Salzman left me with this, and it feels like a crystal-clear conclusion: safe drinking water may be the greatest public health success story in human history, trailing only antibiotics — it’s the reason cholera, typhoid, and polio, once routine killers, are now rare across much of the world. We have the extraordinary privilege of turning on a tap and trusting what comes out. Most of the world can’t say the same. And yet we still reach for the bottle.

Stay thirsty for knowledge, Readers. But not for bottled water.

Flowingly,

Dot

Got a question for Dot? Let her know here: