Question:
Bottled water may be all the rage with health-conscious consumers, but a new U.S. study released on Tuesday indicates it is not necessarily any healthier than most water taken directly from the tap.

any ideas?

Answer: The study, by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), looked at 103 brands of domestic and imported bottled water available in the United States. It found that in at least one sample, 33 percent of the tested brands exceeded bacterial-purity guidelines used by the industry, state-purity standards, or in some cases both.

"Just because water comes from a bottle doesn't mean it's any cleaner or safer than what comes from the tap," Erik Olson, NRDC's senior attorney and the report's lead author, said in a statement.

The NRDC said sales of bottled water have tripled in the last 10 years in the United States, in part due to advertising that hinted, sometimes misleadingly, that the water comes from pure sources such as springs.

"In fact, the study shows that between 25 and 40 percent of bottled waters are repackaged municipal tap water which may or may not have been subjected to additional treatment," the report said.

"People can drink what they want, but if they are going to spend up to 10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water as opposed to what comes from the tap, they have a right to know what's in the water, where it's from, and that it's absolutely pure," Olson said.

The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), representing an industry that sells Americans an estimated 3.4 billion gallons (12.8 billion litres) of bottled water each year, dismissed the NRDC report as an attempt to "scare consumers."

"For the past 37 years ... there have been no confirmed reports in the U.S. of illness or disease linked to bottled water," the IBWA said in a statement, noting that a raft of both internal and external safeguards exist aimed at guaranteeing product purity.