Are Bottled Water a Health Hazard?

           This question has been brought up several times by people.  I never believed that bottled water gives you cancer because I drink it everyday.  I also don't believe that it's a really big health hazard for us to be concerned about, because I mean how does refreshing water could possibly give you cancer?  I am writing about this to prove if bottled water is as harmful as many claimed it is.  Out of my curiosity I did some research on this topic.  After looking up information online, here's what I've found:

         Tap water might be better for you, instead of paying thousands of dollars a year on bottled water, tap water may be safer.  In Mother Nature, the article talks about the reasons to not drink bottled water because studies have shown that the FDA doesn't have as of a stricter rules on bottled water since tap water has to be filtered out for contaminants.  It also shows that tap water and bottled water are regulated by two different administrations, so if one company has certain regulations on tap water the same company can't enforce the rules on bottled water.  So why do we buy bottle water instead of drinking regular tap water?  Many people don't know about the issue with bottled water, they assume that it's a better option and that the water has been treated better than tap water.  How much do you know about bottled water?  The average bottle water is not made locally but being shipped for other states.  Tap water on the other hand is treated locally, so you know more about what's going on with your water.  The CDC reported a couple of outbreaks of contamination from bottled water.  In 2004, they found that the contamination was caused the gasoline byproducts.  What's even worst was the fact that in 2000 one of the reported contaminants was salmonella.  This really shows that we in fact don't know the origin of our water and how it's being treated.  

           

            The fact that I was wrong about bottled water being safer and treated better was shocking.  I am a regular bottled water drinker, and I haven’t had any problems yet.  After doing some research online to learn more about what kind of water I have been drinking, it’s really baffling.  All this time I had no idea of what I have been drinking.  There are no reported deaths from people drinking bottled water but there studies that shows that bottled water are contaminated with just about anything you could think of.  That's still dangerous to think that water could have these harmful contaminants in them.