Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and this is stuff you should know. Unscrew the caps and glug it down. Addition, Uh, that's right. And you know what I think we should say the outset here. Uh, now, no, we have to do. You know what I'm gonna say, Um that we are using a well it's from Julia Layton, actually, one of our writers, but it's from an old how Stuff Works article. Uh. And when I say old, I mean that it's from two thousand five or six or so old unbottled water. Um, so it is old, but I mean I think that most of the stuff in here is still true from skucking in and researching further. But what it did do was provide an interesting look at statistics, because you know, we had to get updated statistics on how much bottled water we use and how big the industry's And it's really amazing though, just to have sort of a before after picture from two thousand six to now two thousand I mean I saw stats from like twenty and twenty one. Yeah, there's been a tad bit of growth since two thousand six in that industry. Yeah, I think like one statue she cites, and we're gonna go through all this. But just as an example, is seven billion gallons of bottled water we're consumed by Americans in two thousand five, and I got from twenty nineteen that is I'm sorry, that is now fifteen billion gallons. That is a tremendous increase in bottled water gallons per American, per year, per American, includes dumb babies. It's a lot of water. I mean, I guess it's better then if we were if we had decided to all start drinking like that much high fruit toast corn syrup every year. But there's a lot of there's a lot of problems with bottled water, as you can imagine, and maybe some you can't quite imagine yet. But we're gonna go over all that. We're gonna give you the ins and out to bottled water. Okay, so please forgive us. This is kind of an old article. I I that what perked my ears up, Chuck, is that she referred to bottled waters new fangled. At one point, I said, people who who drink bottled water just think they're so fancy, and I was like, this seems old. This seems like an old way of looking at well. It's it is interesting because I think that was true for a while, and then I think we're to point now ino where there's a large portion of America that doesn't want to get bottled water at all anymore and refuses to use like single plastic, single use plastics like this. Uh. But there are also still a lot of people that you know, you go and you see him, like loading up by the caseful to stock their house. I can see an emergency stash of something maybe, but I'm just talking like, let me give you an example. I have to tread carefully, uh, because this is a person in our lives. Not your life, but our lives, mine and Emily's lives. But we have a human in our life that came to see us and I bought a bunch of you know, and when we did like, hey, I'm going to the grocery store for the week. Uh, And they went with us and they bought they wanted to buy, like a case of bottle of water. We're like, oh no, no, no, please, don't trying to tread carefully though, you know, we're like, we got really good filtration, good water. It's good, good good. Uh. And they said that they're on a thing where they have to drink so much water. I was like, oh, that's great, uh, and we have a good filtration system here. Um. But they were like, well, it really helps me keep up with how much I'm drink king if I do it per bottle. And Emily just looked at me like she's just like, just shut up, you know. She gave me that look, and I did. But it was really frustrating to know that it's not any easier to keep up than drinking a glass of water. Yeah, I wonder how much. I wonder how much. Also though that person like really just felt like bottled water was healthier or pure or whatever, and it wasn't. It was more than just that. Who knows. I don't know. The reason they gave though, was keeping up with it, Like they lined the bottles up at the end of every day and like shot them with a six shooter that's right right into the ocean. They drove him out to that. But anyway, it's a personal frustration and I'm trying. I'm going to try not to like just live on my soapbox in this episode. But suffice it to say, I I really don't like bottled water, and I try to. I've seen the light, and I will only get bottled water if I'm in a real, real pinch and have to. If somebody's pinching you and they're like, I'm not going to up until you buy bottled water, you do it. No. I mean sometimes when you got a kid, you're stuck somewhere and you're like, you know, you have to hydrate your child. You're like, oh God, I gotta get this bottled water, and I hate it. You're out of high freak toast corn, sir, right uh, And and then try to, you know, at least like, at least let me get like spring water or something. But when the only option is and we'll get to all this is just like purified bottled tap water. I just wanna crawl under the rug. Yeah, well, come out from under the rug, Chuckley. We got to talk about bottled water, so I just wanted to level set. So um, Okay, I think you did that pretty well. Let's talk a little a little history about bottled water. Um. And this comes to us from our friends over at Serious Eats this part's interesting. I thought so too. So um, bottled water has been around I saw somewhere since the eighteenth century in America. Certainly in the mid nineteenth century there were people bottling water and selling them and usually it was like as a remedy. It was a healthy thing, and you would buy them at like spas or something. But that's definitely the origin of bottle water. Yeah, and perry A. You know, I'm I'm sure you remember when we were kids that before like bottle water was as we know, it was such a big thing. Perry A was something you started seeing ads for on TV and in magazines. That was just I think they were smart enough to brand it early on, or not early on in there. I mean they've been around since the mid eighteen hundreds, but early on in the seventies and eighties in America of like, you know, a fancy schmancy thing to do. Yeah, the Patrick Bateman types really slurped it down right. Yeah, But that was that was because of a rebranding that they did a hundred and twenty years after they started selling this stuff here in America. They hired Orson Wells, They got People magazine to write about it. Just became like a thing, and it really dovetailed with that kind of health consciousness that was starting to kind of blossom among baby boomers, who were again all Patrick Bateman type still are, and so Harry became like the first bottled water that America kind of became obsessed with. But it was like aspirational, it was expensive, um, and it was a status symbol, plain and simple. It wasn't until Coke and Pepsi really got into the game that it became like the thing that it is now. Yeah, And I think Pepsi got in first in ninety four with their aquafine a brand, and I think Coke for a while, and I think Coke for a while it's like, no, no, no, we're in the soda game and we don't want this water thing cutting into our soda business because I think they were scared by Perry because they were also marketing it as an alternative soda, like a healthy alternative. And then Pepsi started crushing it, and then Coke was like, well, we can't have that. No, so they launched a sani, which apparently means it means nothing. It's just supposed to evoke like um, a kind of like a refreshing, pure since they ation I guess, I guess um or sorry, a clean, fresh taste that a Coke spokesperson back in the late nineties early two thousand's um. And then that also set off a huge consolidation rush where there I mean, some of the brands that you know today a bottled water like Arrowhead and Poland Springs and Deer Park, they've been around since the mid nineteenth century. They got snatched up by all these larger brands are consolidated. Um. When people started to say, yeah, we'll drink bottle of water, and I remember very clearly in the late nineties early two thousands, there was a big cultural um discussion, I guess, but also kind of chiding of people who drank bottle of water because people like to point out, like a lot of that stuff is coming out of the tap somewhere. It's just purified. And after all that, after the whole discussion was done, America said, you know what we want, bottle water. That's what we're going to drink. And in two thousand seventeen it became the most consumed beverage in the entire United State. Eats bottled water. Yeah, Wow, how about more than more than coffee. And I've been doing my part to keep coffee up there statistically speaking, and it still beats coffee, still beats coke, beats everything else. Bottled water beer beats beer. Yeah, yeah, bottled beer or canned beer. Crazy. Uh yeah, it's hard to believe, um, but that's kind of what's happened here. Um. Julia points out that there are a few reasons, and you mentioned them a little bit with my mystery guests that some of the other reasons people might drink bottle water is they think it might be healthier or more pure, or they might just think it tastes better than tap water, which actually could be the case. There's uh, certainly some funky tasting tapwater in America, depending on where you live, you know, definitely, and there's a lot of people who, um, who like kind of take the opposite tack there, Like America has some of the best, cleanest, safest drinking water in the world, and in some parts of America it's just straight up amazing. Like remember our episode on the New York City's water delivery system and just how amazingly good New York City tap water is. Like in some places there are like the local tap water is what they sell as spring water basically. Um, so some people have it better than others, but in general, people who drink tap water kind of they just take a certain tact towards bottle water, like you're dummy for drinking that, it doesn't make any sense, whereas people with bottle waters, say, you're drinking poison right out of your kitchen sink. I can't believe you would do that to yourself in your family. So there's kind of like a disconnect there between those two groups. Yeah, and to be sure, we are not talking about I mean there are some My my friend, uh Dave Barnhardt is a documentary filmmaker who um has made a documentary on the water in Flint, Michigan. And we're not talking about places where the tapwaters like legit dangerous and it's aimful that that kind of thing goes on in this country these days. So we're not talking about that. We're talking about garden variety tap water that's generally pretty safe. Um, Florida's got some funky water to my friend, egg water. Yeah, well I went to uh my Disney World trip, I got some pretty funky egg water there. Yes, it can be funky. And it's not just funky to drink, it's funky to bathe in. It's funny to be like in the same city as it's just it's funky stuff. For those of you have never experienced egg water, it's called that because it smells a lot like rotten eggs. It's got a lot of sulfur content in it. Totally safe, nothing's wrong with it. Uh, it may even bestow some health benefits compared to water that has a lower sulfur content. Interesting. The upshot of it is it's funky, and it smells bad, and it tastes bad, and you don't really want that. But unfortunately there are some parts of Florida that do have that as their tap water. Now, can you get a filtration system that actually gets rid of that taste? If you do have that coming here for sure? If you want to get rid of everything, you just get a reverse osmosis system, so simple as that. The problem is it takes out everything, So there's beneficial stuff and water you don't really want to take out magnesium, potassium, um, calcium, and probably a bunch of other little micro nutrients and minerals too. That we don't even know about yet. Reverse osmosis takes everything out, which we talked about. We did some sort of water purification episode not too long ago. Yeah, I think that was our water treatment. That was a good one. Okay, so in reverse I think we also do one specifically on reverse osmosis too, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, So it takes everything out. So if you want to get everything out, just get a reverse osmosis system and you're fine. You should be the spokesperson. That's pretty tight. Well, I don't personally believe in reverse osmosis systems. I think it takes too much out and you just have pure water, and I think the water that we drink is supposed to have a little more in there. This would make a terrible ad for reverse osmosis. The second part way for sure, Uh, Julia, And is again from two thousand five, so this is when this was around. But it is pretty interesting to look back at. You know, Bottle labeling is a big thing and you can put a I mean you can't lie on a water bottle out right, but you can get really generous with how far you stretch things. Uh. And there was a company. It's not around anymore called Alaska Water at one point that said Alaska Premium Glacier drinking water, pure glacier water from the last unpolluted frontier, and it came literally from Juneo, Alaska tap water. Yeah, the municipal supply. Yeah, which I guess is uh, you know, if you trace it back, it might come originally from the last unpolluted frontier. Sure. Yeah, No, there's certainly a certain there's a bit of legitimacy to that, but it's it's dishonest still. Yeah, there's there was also one called Glacier clear Water UM that until two thousand two was owned by the Dairy Farmers of America in Kansas City, Missouri. That was sourced in Greenville, Tennessee. So it had nothing to do with glaciers. Like there may have been glacial activity at the last Ice Age around that part of Tennessee maybe, but the water in Tennessee was not coming from any glacial activity um. And so stuff like that that really made the rounds in the early two thousands and made people who were into bottle water look like idiots. Um. But again, even through that kind of gauntlet that bottled water drinkers that Americans in general had to go through on the other side, Like, the propensity for for bottled water was not beaten out of us, it was, it just got even more homed. I guess it's it's strange that that happened, that there was a pushback on the whole thing, and then that pushback just got totally overwhelmed. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Um. I think before we break, maybe we should at least go over the kinds of bottled water that the f d A like the terms the FDA regulates. Yes, at least Okay, Uh, we should start with artesian It's a great sounding word. It sounds very fancy, and that means it comes from an artesian well, which means it comes from a confined aquifer, which is a porous rocket's underground and it comes from porous rock or sand formations. That. Uh, it's under a lot of pressure from these layers of rock or clay and it forces that water up. I think we might have talked about artesian water, but maybe not. There's no way in the last fourteen years we've never mentioned artesian water, you know. I think so there's also mineral water, mineral water, Yeah, I do too. A lot. Mineral water is just water that has a higher um higher content of total dissolved solids, which sounds gross, and it can be gross, for sure, but it's more talking about things like I mentioned earlier, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, stuff that gives water taste, distinctive taste, and in particular, mineral water taste. UM. So, I think the standard because you said the FDA regulate system. We'll talk more about that in a little bit, but the FDA standards that to be mineral water has to be spring water that has at least two parts per million of total dissolved solids. Regular old spring water, non mineral water has fifty. It's a big difference that your tongue can pick up on. Uh. Then you got your naturally sparkling, sparkling water. Uh. And this is yes, folks, there is water that comes from a spring or an artesian well that is naturally carbonated. And even if they take that carbonation out and then put it back in, according to the FDA, you have to recarbonate it to the levels that it once was naturally to qualify for that language. Yeah, And I went and looked, and I was sad to see that my favorite Sam Pellegrino water. It uh, it is artificially carbonated after the fact, and that's sad because I was looking into this and apparently um natural carbonation, which like volcano is heating the rock that the that holds the aquifer and it turns the carbon into a gas, and so it's naturally carbonated. Apparently it's much softer, less harsh on the throat and the stomach. Um. But it's really really hard to keep water carbonated and then get it to market. So they take the water out and then recarbonated and then sell it. So it's really hard to find naturally carbonated water. And I think it's very expensive too. I like that Tobo Chico. I don't believe that that is naturally carbonated. I I'm sure it's probably not because it is good, though I agree it makes me sneeze every time I drink it. But that comes to a glass bottle. It tickles your nose, it does, and we don't buy cases in cases of it. It's a treat, yeah, and it does come in a glass bottle. But Chuck, I've seen you. You You have a ritual where every time you finish off a bottle of smash it on the ground and shout say yahoo. Yeah. And sometimes I'll smash it against like something hard it and then hold the broken bottleneck in my hand and you can't tempt anyone to come at me. Yeah, you'll say, any takers. Uh, never had any takers either, he knows you never have. It's very menacing. What else we got. We got the purified water I was talking about. And this is when you're talking about the dissanis and the aquafinas. Is when they take public tap water uh and they purify it. It comes from in other words, of municipal water source. Uh. And that's pretty much the long and short of that. And I mean, if you're talking about pure water, this is like the most artificial water. It's the most heavily treated water, because yeah, you're taking tap water and then you're bottling it and selling it. And the FDA says, Okay, there's some things you have to do if you're selling purified water. It has to be if you're selling it from like a municipal source. Um. You you have to either filter it, you have to distill it. You have to run it through that old reverse osmosis. You have to take some oxygen and subjected to electricity and create ozone and then infuse the water with that. So it goes and reacts with all the stuff in there and and UM purifies it, or you could run it through UV light treatment or some combination of that. But that's what purified water is. And as a matter of fact, it didn't realize this chuck. But you can buy and I could not find what labels this was, but you can buy water that was originally nonpotable water, meaning like you should not be drinking this is not for human consumption. UM that can be treated through these these ways and it becomes it can be bottled and sold as purified water because the end result is the same. It's almost devoid of anything but water molecules. Yeah, and I think, and we'll get into the different f d A versus e p A standards, because e p A s who regulates your tap water. But I believe that e p A standard or the FDA standard for bottled water allows more poop in your water than the e p A does in your tap water. Right, Yeah, The e p A says you can have zero poop in your water, and the FDA says, hey, hey, this relax a little bit. Let's let's take our hang ups off of the American public. Oh man, what's wrong with a little poop in your water? Right? Uh, you've got spring water, which I love. Uh. There's nothing better than if you can drink directly from a spring when you're hiking in the woods, cupped in your hand, like Daniel Boone did. Just the best thing in the world. It comes from a protected underwater spring and it flows to the surface on its own. It just bubbles right up there. It's a really a wonderful sight to behold if you've never seen a natural spring. I love it. I love it. And then it's collected there at the surface in the case of bottling, or maybe they may drill down if they can't get, you know, to the surface, but it's like a sanitary, protected area that it's drilled down to where what's feeding the spring. Like they might just go to an area that's more accessible, I guess, uh. And then but if they do that, though, they have to have it has to be the same composition as as it does from the source. Yes, Hey, I'm gonna put three words together, and you try to convince me that they don't evoke an image of a future medical kink, sanitary, protected whole and that awful and then an awful collection of words. Uh yeah, it's uh yeah, that could be the album new album title for Diarrhea Planet. I guess so, but it's kind of the opposite of a diarrhea planet if you think about it. Yeah, I think that's the twist. Yeah, hey, diarrhea Planet. I hope you guys are still doing it. Uh so, then you got well water is the last one before we go to our break, and that comes from a well it does. Simple simple. It's a new one. I'm testing out because I've been using easy peasy too much. Did you just say simple fimple? Yeah, but really you could. You could make anything. You could use any consonant or combination for simple, pimp. That's kind of gross. You could say simple simple, I guess, but that's unnecessarily complex. I like easy beasy, lemon squeezy. Yeah, I do too, But again, it's it's starting to kind of take off a little bit, so I'm gonna go elsewhere. All right, simple simple, We'll be right back. Stuck stucks in. That sucks. I don't know that you know it. Stuck and Stuck. It's a great name. That's the name of it. It's a great name. Alright, Stucks net within with an X. I want to learn about a rosortic college act, how to take the perfect but with all about fractals, getting kiscon that's the hun the Lizzie Border murders that they kind of all runs on the plane everything we should know. Word up, Jerry. Alright, Chuck. So, like we said, the FDA regulates bottled water, and it's kind of a quirk of bureaucracy that it does. It would make way more sense that the e p A does, But the e p A says, no, we're too busy concentrating on drinking water and our standards. F DA, you go handle this, And the FDA says, that makes sense because we're going to consider bottled water a packaged food, which is I can't remember what episode we talked about it in, but that's why water has an expiration date because it's considered a package food, and all packaged foods have to have an expiration date, even though water is never really going to expire, right, So the FDA is in charge of regulating bottled water and they do a so so job of it. Yeah. I think the deal is is the f d A considers bottled water low the categorized as as low risk. Yeah, so just a presumption. Yeah, and I guess that I don't know. I guess that lets them internally off the hook for I mean, I'm sure surely it shouldn't be as robust as like pharmaceuticals or something. I'm not saying that, but uh, yeah, they categorize it as low risk. Uh they It says that it must come from a roof source. But that doesn't mean it's not like the f d A goes out to the spring in Tennessee or whatever to check it out or anything like that. Right, No, they definitely do not. They. Um, they say it has to come from you know, one of these like an archiesian well, it has to come from well water, it has to come from municipal water, like all those those sources that we mentioned. And by the way, right um, and by the way, you have to actually put on your label what kind of water this is? Like those aren't just like like you know, categories like those are terms that you will see on a bottled water label because by law, they have to say what kind of water, it is right. And and then further than that, like they have kind of sub regulations for the different kinds of water, Like if it's from a spring or something like that, Um, I think they they they has to be tested like once a week or something to make sure it's sanitary. Um. That's another one. If it comes from a from municipal water, it has to go through that filtrition process like we said. Um. And then also if you add anything to the water, because remember I was saying reverse osmosis chuck is like it takes everything out pure the water purification does well. They usually add some stuff in to give that water flavor. Again, if it's like that, say like they put they fortify it with protein molecules or chunks of fat or something like that. It's got to say in the label it contains chunks of fat or with ad fat is probably how the marketing team would want them to say it. And like a starburst you know on the label. Uh. Interestingly, fluoride is uh. When we did an episode on Florida that was jeez, I feel like one of our earlier year one or two episodes definitely the fluoridation of our drinking water in the United States, um bottled water is not fluoridated, so uh. Some dentists have talked about the fact that if you only drink bottled water in your house, then you're avoiding that fluoridation that they think you need to make your teeth strong. Yeah, so if they if it's bottled water with added fluoride, like I think a lot of baby water, that's the thing. Is there baby water? Yeah? I think there's like Gerber bottled water for babies and stuff like that. I think those things usually have added fluoride. But it's gonna say it on the on the label. If you don't see on the label with added fluoride or something like that, that's not a thing. Why has no one, I'm sure this will happen at some point. Why has no one tried to collect rainwater and market that as like, you know, Icelandic rainwater bottled up. I would bet you a hundred dollars someone has you think? Sure gotta be because I was thinking, like when I said, like, what other water sources are there? Obviously there's the ocean and stuff like that, but it's like, well, I guess there's rainwater, and why hasn't someone you know touted that as like the next big thing. I mean, it's supposed to be some of the purest water you can get your hands on is rainwater, which is surprising but true. They don't know because it's come out of the sky, and the sky is poisoned all of us obviously, Yeah, you would call it though, you call it skywater s k y e with like an um loud over everything. Right. Um. I hope it didn't give someone an idea. I again, I think somebody's probably done that, all right. So the FDA also says there's just certain amounts of stuff you can have it there. Again, poop, you can have a certain amount of poop, bacteria, virus, is, parasites, you can have a certain amount of raid on in there. You're gonna have a certain amount of lead in there. That's actually, that's actually right. That's actually one place where the f d A exceeds the e p A standards is with lead. The FDA says you have to have a much lower amount of lead in your bottled water than the FDA allows for because the or the e p A allows for in tap water. Because a lot of the pipes in the United States have lead in them, and supposedly as long as your local water supply is not over chlorinated or being overtreated, that the water won't corrode the lead and very little lead will be brought to your tap. So the e p A says, some leads going to be in your water just by virtue of flowing through these pipes. And the FDA says, well, this stuff is not supposed to be flowing through pipes, or if it did flow through pipes, it has to be so so well filtered that there there should be almost no lead in it whatsoever. But other than that, the e p A usually beats the f d A. Right, Yeah, and then you know this is the federal standards. Then your different state and may or may not have h state regulations for the industry. Uh. Some states don't have anything at all going on. Some states are going to be a little more strict obviously, uh, and say like you have to have a license, you have to submit to inspections of that kind of thing. Um. So if you're you know, if you're out there thinking what is one to do, then it sounds like the wild West. There is a voluntary body, the International Bottled Water Association, UH, The good news is is that I believe, and this is an old number, but I bet it's still pretty accurate that about of the bottled water in the US is a member of the i b w A and they have their own internal, like self enforced regulations as far as you know, it's called I believe the i w B A model code. Uh. And you know they talk about, you know, all the filtration types and all the disinfecting that you have to do and stuff like that. Yeah, and like really they really stepped up their game with the Let's get the poop out campaign of two thousand thirteen really had a big effect on the industry. Right. But to be clear, this is not like a body that like impostes fines or stuff like that. It's all just sort of self regulated and voluntary. Yeah. It's like, um ooh, man, what episode we're talking about where it's like, I have a feeling this is the industry getting out ahead of a problem, like problem legislation that's going to make them do stuff. I remember, I don't either, but I have a feelings. And I think anytime you see an industry coming up with its own voluntary regulations, it's a lot of um, uh pr stuff, you know what I mean. I did, but they I mean, they do have these standards and they do have um, you know, certification you can get through them. Um. But yeah, again, it's it's voluntary. And like you said, like if if you are not selling water from state to state, technically the FDA does not have jurisdiction over you as long as you're only selling within your state's boundaries, as long as the source of this water comes entirely from within that state's boundaries. And then if that state is one of those I think seven or eleven states that don't regulate bottled water, there's no one looking over your shoulder whatsoever. Your water is totally unregulated. It falls in a weird little loophole like what that part in Yellowstone Park that supposedly has no laws on it or whatever. That's kind of like that situation. But then I saw that there's a way that the FDA can still get you if your packaging was made in another state, any part of it. You're now subject to full FDA oversight for your bottle of water, interstate uh whatever, packaging. Yeah, I guess so should we. I think we should talk about leaching some because I feel like leaching is something that is kind of just started to come around in the past like six or seven years, which is the idea that wait a minute, we have all this bottle water stored in the garage, cases and cases of it stored in our hot garage in Arizona. Is that bad for you? And the answers is yes, it is. Uh. Leeching happens the you know, we can, we'll get into all the different kinds of plastics, but um, mainly what you're gonna find is polycarbonate. You're gonna find PVC, and you're gonna find polly styrene. And you know, back in the day, there were some people that said, like, oh, it's really fine, it's no big deal. Other people would say, well, we're really not sure. And other people would say, no, if you heat up a bottle that has uh, how's it pronounced thay lates, th lights, lights, thals, p h t h A l a t e s, everyone knows what those are. Um that it's it's gonna be leaching chemicals into your water, especially if it stays warm, especially if it's stored for a long long time. And I read recently and this is something I would do if I, uh, if I like had to get a bottle of water like in a pinch like I was talking about, I would say, all right, at least I'm gonna keep this bottle and like refill it for as long as possible. Uh. They said that that's not a good thing to do either, because multiple reuses will encourage leaching, which I didn't know, right, So did you mention the two eighteen study at all? Not? So this this article, this is like a little time capsule because chuck in it. They quote a guy from the PG Research Foundation who basically says, it's all good, We're fine. And I went and looked it up. I'm like, that sounds really fishy. Where they get their funding? What is the PG stand for? Their defunct They came along in just long enough to tell everybody that plastic was fine, and now they're defunct, so it's even fishier. I couldn't find any funding stuff like that. But since then, um, that suspicion that now there's some sort of like leaching going on and that's probably bad for us has finally been quantified. There's a two thou eighteen study in Frontiers and Chemistry and in the study, two fifty nine different bottle water sold in eleven different countries were tested, and then what they found is like, of no surprise whatsoever had micro plastics in them. And I suspect the other seven percent, like they screwed up the testing, Like I can't believe it's not a hundred percent of these bottle waters have a microplastics. Yeah, this is uh. If you want to read the original article, it's really good. It's from Time magazine. Your bottle water probably has plastic in it? Should you worry? By markham Hyde. I guess, And it's from May of twenty nineteen, and yeah, it's definitely. It's definitely good to see like a real source in a real study and not just a defunct organization. That's like that's pretty good. Yeah, it's fine, don't worry about it. So in this um they found that there's a substantial amount of microplastics. And this's not like little trace amounts. Remember like the parts per million or parts per billion of some of the stuff that the f D A H and E p A allows in bottle water and tap water. The average among these two nine bottle waters was three D and twenty five particles per leader of microplastics. Yeah, that's seems like a lot. Okay, if that seems like a lot, buckling for this one. Nestlee Pure Life bottled water had an average of ten thousand particles per leader of microplastics. You might say, okay, let's fine and get a little plastic in my teeth, like pull it out, it's fine. Um, microplastics are becoming uh, it's becoming clear that microplastics are probably endocrine disruptors. I think they fall into a class called obeseagen's and polypropylene in particular seems to be an endoc endocrine disruptor. And you'll never guess what our bottled water, what type of plastic our bottled water bottles are made out of? That? Yes, polypropylene. So this seems to be one of those things where everybody's like, yeah, we don't understand it, so it's probably fine. And now we're finally getting to the science where it's like, man, microplastics are really screwing us up. And even worse than just being in our bottled water, they're everywhere. Like we have a an episode do where we just talk about microplastics. Okay, yeah, we'll take a break here. In a sec. But I think to set us up for the next part, which is the environmental nightmare, which is just the bottles themselves, like after you drink it in the environment, because we're talking about like drinking the water itself. Uh, And we'll get into the nightmare of after you've had that water in the single use plastic aspect in a sec after the break. But microplastics I read basically that plastic water bottles don't break down at all. When they say like, oh, it takes some five years to break down, they don't break down. They basically say that they just break apart in the microplastics, and that microplastic ironically will end up in the water supply, which could ensure one day that we can only drink things like bottled water because there's so much microplastic in the water supply on the plastic water bottles that people drank that never break down. Isn't that amazing full circles, such a beautiful circle of life that we've got going on? All Right, we'll take that break and we'll we'll talk more about single use plastic and why that's such a problem. Right for this stuck stuck in home, I don't know that you know it. Stuck in this it's a great name. That's the name of it. It's a great name, alright, stuck within with an X I want to learn about as how to take a perfect but with all about fractals and kiscon that's the hun the Lizzie Border murders that they kind of all runs on the plane everything that we should know. No word up, Jerry, Okay, Chuck. So we're talking about single use plastic, which means you take a bottled water, you drink the water, and then you just toss the plastic bottle. Apparently, if we've come a long way in recycling, it used to be something like ten percent of bottled water bottles were recycled back when this article was first written. Now we're up to all my in the US, uh, specifically because Norway recycles of their plastic okay, and then so part of the problem with that, if you'll remember back to our Recycle Update episode, China recently said, you know what, you can take all your dirty plastic bottles and shove them because we're not going to recycle them for you anymore, which is a big problem because recycling plastic can be actually fairly expensive. In China was basically the world's plastic recycler for a long time. So now people are trying to figure out how to how to handle this issue, which has now become even more pronounced um. And that's kind of where we are right now, while America is at the same time in the world, frankly stepping up to UM use even more plastic water bottles than ever. Yeah, there is one alternative that I've seen being used here and there. It's corn based. It's called p l A or pole. It's made from polylactic acid uh, and it is biodegradable, uh, compostable three months to degrade in a compost pile. But here's the fine print. It sounds great, and I saw that, you know, a major fancy schmancy hotel chain, you know, made the big switch and had made a big to do about this. It like, now we use corn bass and it's compostable, but it's only compostable if you compost it. And even the head of the hotel chain was like, yeah, we found that very little actually makes it to the compost pile. UM, So it's not it's not recyclable, like if you throw it in the recycling p l A will mess up and it doesn't even take much for it to to really mess up the uh, the other kinds of plastic that they're recycling. So they just dump it all and yeah, I mean exactly, and or they try and sending it on a boat to China and that's a long long way. That's an environmental nightmare. So you know, be aware if you see corn based biodegradable plastic. Uh, unless you know, you really take it upon yourself to compost it, then you're you're doing the right thing, good for you. But very it says, very little of this stuff ever makes it to the compost. Yes, so there's like fifty of our of our previous episode just hanging around here, like our episode on soda or episode I'm recycling, or episode and composting, our episode on plastics, remember the Great Pacific garbage patch we talked about plastic never breaking down. That's all. They're all showing up for a friendly hello, our episode on diarrhea Planet. That's right, which, by the way, we should just explain real quick. Oh, there's probably a lot of people they're like, what are you talking about? Because it was a random reference years ago. They're a band, Diarrhea Planet, and they're great, and I'm a big fan, and I just always thought that they should change their name. So that's why we're It's a callback from years ago, and I think you should fill them in in case they don't stumble across the episode where that appeared. And what did you say they should change their name to. Yeah, I don't know what brought the whole thing up. Frozen poop knife. Oh, that's right. You remember somebody made a knife out of the poop and killed a bear or an interloper or like an evil brother in law. I don't know, And that's what brought the whole thing up. Yeah, they're great though, they're they're from Nashville, and uh, I don't know that we've ever heard from them, but that we did, they rejected our publicly, our suggestion publicly on Twitter. All right, Yeah, man, I gotta fill you in on the last thirteen years. You're you're getting blank. So just to kind of button this up about the single use plastic, like it is a problem everybody and it's just one of those things like our trash also did a landfill episode that we just kind of put out of sight. And out of mind. But that doesn't mean it just disappears and goes away. So fortunately, one of the things that a lot of people are thinking of who think about this kind of stuff is something that has made sense for a long time. But in our Littering episode, we talked about how there was a huge corporate push to basically say, you're the litter bug. You the person using it. We the people who are making this plastic packaging and who are um using it to sell you our products, and it's not our fault. Finally, finally, some people in legislatures are calling bs on that, and there's something called extended producer responsibility laws. Yeah, me too. Uh, they're thinking of them in Washington State, Maine, and Michigan, and it basically says you have to figure out, like you are responsible for dealing with the packaging waste that your product is solding. You don't just get to walk away from it. And I think they're trying to figure out how to make that happen. But the fact that they're even talking about this stuff is another example that we're starting to wake up. Finally, that's amazing, that's cool. I think of hearing that I do too, Chuck. Will it make a difference. Stay tuned. I should shout out my friends film. By the way, I just realized, like Dave's one of my very best friends. Uh, you want to watch that documentary. It's very eye opening. Uh. And it is called Flint The Poisoning of an American City. Uh. And boy, if you want to, if you want your eyes opened about you know, the fact that it can be you know that you're in the twenties and that we're still just like pumping poison water to a to a town astounding rates, then you should check it out. Yeah, I'm going to check that one out. I'll bet it's good. It sounds blood boiling. What about the taste of bottled water, because that's sort of the one thing we haven't really covered is some people say they like the taste more, and you know, they're certainly haven't been very scientific studies, but there have been random like things and and stuff like that where they will, uh, they will do like blind taste tests, and it depends on where you are, obviously, and I think a lot of these have happened in New York. But yeah, unfair, yeah, because they have good water, but in blind taste tests. It seems like a lot of times that people either can't tell the difference or they rate tap water kind of higher than they ordinarily would if it was labeled as such. Yeah, I think depending on how um gross your tap water tastes, or how much you're into mineral water, um taste can be a factor. Like if you don't want your water taste at all, go get yourself some purified water and call it a day. Or if you if your tap water is pretty bland and you like a little taste to it, you might want some mineral water, sparkling mineral water. Who knows, right, So taste is probably the one thing that you can say, Yeah, that might actually be a factor, um, but not always a lot of people choose tapwater and blind taste tests like you were talking about. Yeah, I saw a water Somalia in New York. Oh, I've I've seen that guy? Did you see that? It was? I think? Why do I want to say? It was that TV show that uh Zach? What's his face? Who's the hunky guy? I think all all guy's name is Zach or hunky Za Galivanakis. Yeah, he's example he really always been hunky. I can't remember the zac Efron Uh, he has that show and if I'm not mistaken, he sat down with the water Somalia Uh, and it was it was really interesting. I mean it's very easy to scoff at something like that, but water are different kinds of water for sure, have different flavor profiles and um, and it's interesting to sit down and sort of listen to someone walk you through that. I don't know if I would go to the water Cafe or wherever this was that they were doing this, but um, I just found it interesting. It is interesting. It's like the water Boy. Remember that that movie with Adam Sandler. Sure he had that magic water that just tasted amazing. Yeah, my brother is on record, is uh. It's very characteristic of him as saying that his favorite water is hose water. Yeah, hose water is pretty good, have that nice rubber taste. Yeah. I think he's being serious too, and I think it evokes uh uh, you know childhood stuff when you're outside playing and having like a water hose fight. Then you drink some of that stuff. Yeah, the added sensation of like that slight sting because it's coming out a little faster than you wanted to, or is a spider perhaps gonna come out right. So there are some people who are like, hey, hey, this is all fun and games to to poop poo Americans over use of bottled water and everything. There are plenty of places that don't have access to clean drinking water, and in that sense, bottle of water is literally a lifesaver. Um. There's nobody arguing that or denying that. I think what people are saying is like, look, if you live in America, your tap water, for the most part, with some um some places shamefully accepted, is probably as healthy, taste, probably as good, and as roughly as pure as the bottled water that you're paying hundreds to maybe thousands of times more for, you know, drop for drop, and is having far less of an ecological um impact than your bottled water is your little bottled water habit. And I think that makes sense, and that certainly was a sensible thing to say in two thousand five. But there are people who who say, Okay, maybe we don't do bottled water. I get that because I'm concerned about microplastics. I also realized it's an ecological nightmare. But I don't know that it's a good idea to say, everybody just drink water out of the tap, and what they point to is the Safe Drinking Water Act from the seventies. I believe. I think Ironized Cody really had an impact on that one um and then it was updated and then that was it. And since then our science of oh, what's this thing in the water we didn't notice before that we said was fine, maybe we should start studying that. Oh it turns out it gives you bladder cancer? Or how is it okay to have chlorine in your water really even in small amounts? Like, all of this research just is happening, and more of it needs to happen. But just as much Congress these to say, hey, scientists, what have you been finding out about water that we're drinking? Since let's update the laws. Because the municipal tap water can be within those those those quotas or limits set by the Safe Drinking Water Act. That doesn't mean it's actually safe. It just means that from what Congress has set the limits for, it's safe. It's what Congress has said is safe. It's not necessarily scientifically safe. So we need to do more and more research on the water drinking because it's such a vitally important part of our world. Um, and it's pretty ridiculous that here in the United States that hasn't been updated for twenty five years. Yeah, and that would give you know, some Southern member of Congress to stand up and like beat their shoe on the desk and say these laws are as out data is an old water article on how stuff works. That was a great Trent Lot. Trent Lot. Yeah, is that guys still around? No? No, I'm just trying really hard to demonstrate how irrelevant and out of date we are. Oh. I thought I had something else to say, but now I can't think of it. Sorry, man, I didn't mean it, derail. No, No, I'm good. Well, if you want to know more about bottle water, you could do worse than checking out this anequated article on how stuff works. You can check out Serious Eats for some great history. We also got some search from yep, Time magazine, healthline all over the internet, and there is something called the Environmental Working Group. They have a tapwater database. It's awesome. You can go in, type in your zip code, select your water utility, and then just have the socks scared off of you when it reveals to you what's in your water? Checking out? I did that yesterday. I know what I was gonna say. Uh, you know the little um box water that they're doing now, is is a better alternative even than single use plastic? Oh yeah, the box water that sends you a check every month and the hopes that you'll mention them. You chill. It's not a brand, I don't think, is it? Yeah? Oh? Is it really? It's called box water, I believe. So Okay, I just meant water that's packaged in something that's uh not leaching plastic and it's easier to recycle. But I got you right? Do you know those boxes are made from baby lambs? Ah? What are you gonna do? Then? Nothing? You just give up? I guess all right. Well, since I said give up everybody, that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm clickity clicking, and I'm finding it. See I've got four good ones stored up here. Oh good. You know I'll do this one because this is uh promoting a documentary that I want to see another one. Hey, guys, love your show. Always thrilled it when a new episode pops up. My girlfriend and I both listened separately and together it was great to hear an entire episode dedicated to Wiseman's movie to the Cut Follies. Though any self respecting documentary filmmaker knows it well, it's a movie that many in the civilian world quote unquote don't. I'm surprised by how many people have never even heard of Gray Gardens. Anyway, been wanting to write for a while in hopes of turning you guys onto a movie that I made, and this recent Titticut Follies episode seemed to be the perfect excuse. It's called strad Style. It's a documentary about a rural Ohio gentleman with an obsession for strativeri the violin, of course, who, through the magic of social media, convinces a famous European concert violinists that he can make a copy of one of the most famous and valuable violins in the world. If you've ever seen and liked something like American Movie, I think you might dig this. Uh it was shot by the way that Strade Style has a shot in it that it is own that has an homage wink to Titticut Follies in it as well. And he sent me the trailer and uh it looks great. It looks like it did quite well in the festival circuit. It's like a real deal documentary and it's called Strade Style s t R a E made by listener and filmmaker, uh Stephen Abalos and go stream it. I'm gonna watch it. It looks really good. Same here. It does sound magnificent. Actually, yeah, it looks good. It looks right up my alley. Well, thanks Stephen or Stefan, depending on how you pronounce your name. Congratulations on your doc. That's a huge achievement and we're proud of you. We don't even know you, and we're proud of you. So thanks. Thanks for letting everybody know. Thanks to you Chuck for letting everybody know. If you want us to let everybody know, let us know via email. Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.