Bad News for the Evian Set

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental advocacy group operating out of California, released a report last week that sent a tidal wave through one of the least practical industries in America. It turns out that bottled water, according to the group, is hardly any better than tap water--in fact, 17 percent of the samples tested by the group flunked the water industry's own purity standards. The group accompanied the report with a call for tighter FDA regulations on bottled water and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J) said last Tuesday he would introduce a bill that would require bottled water to at least meet the same purity standards as tap water. Tighter regulation might be the least of the industry's problems, though: a separate California group filed a lawsuit the day after the report was released, accusing the bottled water industry of various health violations and false advertising.

Whatever the legal consequences of the NRDC report, a cherished American myth has taken a serious, perhaps fatal, blow. Americans spent $4 billion on 3.4 billion gallons of bottled water last year, despite the fact that, as most people realize, the whole concept behind the fad is completely absurd.

Convincing a whole nation to pay a hefty premium for something available at home for next to nothing has to be one of the greatest feats in the history of American advertising. That's not to say there aren't places in the U.S. where avoiding tap water is probably a good idea, but on the whole American tap water is clean, well-regulated and safe.

It's a moot point, though, because I don't believe concerns over water safety were really ever the reason people bought bottled water. Bottled water, along with cigars, cell phones and stock options, is a quintessential yuppie accesory. The always-questionable health benefits of bottled water (Perrier, the trendy water of the '80s, was found to contain carcinogenic benzene in 1990) might have been how you justified buying bottled water, but the sad fact is you simply couldn't be seen at the health club with tap. You had to have the right "designer water," as Gary Trudeau called it.

Alas, the NRDC report may kill this venerable tradition. If so, the cultural impact should not be underestimated. The bottled water class will find new absurdities to embrace, no doubt. But it will be hard to find a more perfect symbol of decadent consumerism as bottled water, unless someone starts selling air in a can.