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Lead in Bottled Waters: Contamination from Glass and Comparison with Pristine Groundwater
journal contribution
posted on 2007-05-15, 00:00 authored by William Shotyk, Michael KrachlerUsing clean lab methods and protocols developed for
measuring lead (Pb) in polar snow and ice, we report the
abundance of Pb in 125 brands of bottled water from 28
countries. Comparison of six samples of each of three brands
of water available in both glass and polyethyelene
terephthalate (PET(E)) showed that the waters bottled in
glass contained approximately 57, 30, and 26 times more Pb
due to leaching from the containers. Excluding the
bottled waters in glass, the median Pb concentration in
all bottled waters was found to be 8.5 ng/L (n = 185), with
a range from <1 to 761 ng/L Pb. Our study includes 25
brands of bottled water from Canada, and the median Pb
concentration in these samples was 15.9 ng/L (n = 25),
with a range from 2.1 to 268 ng/L. For comparison with the
bottled waters, pristine groundwater from six artesian
flows in southern Ontario, Canada, where some of the bottled
waters originate, yielded a median concentration of 5.1
ng/L Pb (n = 18). The median Pb concentrations reported
here for bottled waters from Canada are 32−588 times
less than those presented in recently published studies. In
fact, all of the waters tested were well below the maximum
allowable concentration established by the EU, Health
Canada, and the WHO for Pb in drinking water (10 μg/L).