ok Nipper, here's a little basic water quiz: how many lbs per gallon of water? what does MPN mean? what is a clarifier? name some steps in water treatment...how much does a cubic ft. of water weigh? why is water called the universal solvent? Do women's breasts shrink when in the water?BERKELEY SPRINGS, W.Va. - Water from around the world was tasted by 10 judges Saturday at the 18th annual Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting at The Country Inn.
The media panel judged municipal, bottled noncarbonated, sparkling and purified drinking water in the afternoon and evening.
Jill Klein Rone, producer of the event, said there were 118 entries in this year's event, which was slightly more than last year. She said about 200 people attended the event.
The judges were trained by water master Arthur von Wiesenberger, an international water expert from Santa Barbara, Calif. (!!)
"You don't want negative tastes that make you gag," von Wiesenberger said. A good water should have a nice sweetness, be fresh and thirst quenching, and have a balanced feel with the correct minerals, he said.
"Bottled water has been the whipping boy for the recycling environmental movement, but represents one-third of 1 percent of the packaging stream," he said.
ohboy..a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing...
says Nipper: "A good water should have a nice sweetness, be fresh and thirst quenching, and have a balanced feel with the correct minerals," he said. Ahh.. Nipper, water has no taste..if it is sweet, then someone put sugar in your glass ie, made a solution! A balanced feel for a glass of water?? WTF are you talking about.. are you crazy?? you sure got a lot of gall, to be so useless and all...
Bottled water means garbage
Bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. According to Food and Water Watch, that plastic requires up to 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce. And while the plastic used to bottle beverages is of high quality and in demand by recyclers, over 80 percent of plastic bottles are simply thrown away.
That assumes empty bottles actually make it to a garbage can. Plastic waste is now at such a volume that vast eddies of current-bound plastic trash now spin endlessly in the world’s major oceans. This represents a great risk to marine life, killing birds and fish which mistake our garbage for food. (does Wendy know you kill marine life, Nipper??)
Thanks to its slow decay rate, the vast majority of all plastics ever produced still exist-somewhere.
Bottled water means less attention to public systems
Many people drink bottled water because they don’t like the taste of their local tap water, or because they question its safety.
This is like running around with a slow leak in your tire, topping it off every few days rather than taking it to be patched. Only the very affluent can afford to switch their water consumption to bottled sources. Once distanced from public systems, these consumers have little incentive to support bond issues and other methods of upgrading municipal water treatment.
The bottled water business in the United States is booming. People increasingly are willing to pay for something they can just as easily have for free. Yet many people around the world have no dependable, safe drinking water. Charles Fishman of Fast Company magazine talks about his article "Message in a Bottle" with Robert Siegel. In the article, Fishman calls a plastic bottle of water in a store's cooler "the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture. It acknowledges our demand for instant gratification, our vanity, our token concern for health. Its packaging and transport depend entirely on cheap fossil fuel."
Olson adds, "Unlike tap water violations, which are directly enforceable, if a company exceeds bottled water standards, it is not necessarily a violation—they can just say so on the label, and may be insulated from enforcement." Further, while EPA rules specify that no confirmed E. coli or fecal coliform (bacteria that indicate possible contamination by fecal matter) contamination is allowed in tap water, the FDA merely set a minimum level for E. coli and fecal coliform presence in bottled water. Tap water from a surface source must be tested for cryptosporidium, giardia and viruses, unlike bottled water, and must also be disinfected, unlike bottled water. Hoober also notes that food products such as "carbonated water," "soda water" and "seltzer water"—in addition to most flavored waters—are held to even looser standards than "true" bottled water.
emag
next year, the annual air breathing contest!!
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