Bottled Water Fight Heats Up
The argument over the purity of bottled water is beginning to boil. A petition drive by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released yesterday demanded that politicians scuttle plans to ban bottled water for safety workers and consumers. This week, bottled water companies are meeting in Las Vegas to consider the future of the industry, the CEI said in its statement.
The CEI petition comes on the heels of a report last week from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), stating its testing "revealed chemical contaminants in every bottled water brand analyzed," including a number of retail private label bottled water.
Wal-Mart Stores and Giant Foods quickly denounced the EWG's claim it found toxic byproducts of chlorination in Wal-Mart's Sam's Choice and Giant's Acadia bottled water brands.
CEI's petition campaign called EWG's report "a politically-motivated attack against bottled water," and "a study by an environmental pressure group designed to undermine confidence in the safety of the product."
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principle of free enterprise and limited government, according to its press release.
The Environmental Working Group, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a non-profit organization founded in 1993 by Ken Cook and Richard Wiles, "that uses the power of public information to protect public health and the environment," according to the organization's Web site.
The CEI petition comes on the heels of a report last week from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), stating its testing "revealed chemical contaminants in every bottled water brand analyzed," including a number of retail private label bottled water.
Wal-Mart Stores and Giant Foods quickly denounced the EWG's claim it found toxic byproducts of chlorination in Wal-Mart's Sam's Choice and Giant's Acadia bottled water brands.
CEI's petition campaign called EWG's report "a politically-motivated attack against bottled water," and "a study by an environmental pressure group designed to undermine confidence in the safety of the product."
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principle of free enterprise and limited government, according to its press release.
The Environmental Working Group, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a non-profit organization founded in 1993 by Ken Cook and Richard Wiles, "that uses the power of public information to protect public health and the environment," according to the organization's Web site.