Bottled water: Safety concerns

Kind attention: next time you buy a bottle of packaged drinking water thinking it’s safe to drink, pause to think again. After all, it's better to be safe than sorry given the fact that several bottled water companies are breaching quality norms blatantly. Various studies have revealed that almost 10 per cent samples of bottled water failed the quality test in 2010-11 and 2011-12 pan India. Recently, the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, K V Thomas, submitted the report of water samples collected from across India in Lok Sabha. As per the government data, 805 out of 6,648 samples and 720 out of 7,732 samples failed the test in 2010-11 and 2011-12 respectively.

Rising health awareness among people and the government’s failure to provide safe drinking water have helped the bottled water industry to flourish. Thus the industry has become one of the fastest growing in India. According to MarketResearch.com, the industry is likely to grow at a CAGR of 18 per cent till 2017. . Which means that the water bottled industry in 2011, worth a mere $1,454 million, would grow to become a $3,925 million industry by 2017.

However, the common perception that growing competition enhances the quality of the product in the market is not true for the water bottled industry. As per the government report, the National Capital Region (NCR), Maharashtra and Goa have been found to have a higher sampling failure rate. For instance, in Delhi and Noida, around 20 per cent samples failed to match the quality standards. In the same vein, 123 of 989 samples failed the test in Goa and Maharashtra. However, the safety concerns regarding packaged water are not new. Way back in 2003, the Pollution Control Board in West Bengal revealed that “bottling plants in the state are operating without statutory clearance.”

Similarly, the Chennai City Corporation found in 2008 that 32 out of 94 packaged drinking water samples were unfit for consumption.

Clearly, ensuring the quality of bottled water is a concern that should not be taken  lightly. India is losing one lakh people annually to water-borne diseases. However, people have the perception that bottled water is safe for drinking and can be a good bet gainst contracting water-borne diseases. But the reality is quite otherwise. Now,  the government needs to ensure that the quality of all packaged water meets the health and saftey benchmarks by forfeiting the licenses of errant manufacturers. It's the least that it can do.