Since 2011 the WHO recognizes that city water contains various pollutants, including pesticides and drug residues that the treatment plants are unable to filter. Obviously, no one had thought about this type of pollution and the facilities of the treatment plants designed about twenty years ago are insufficient to stop this type of pollutants and endocrine disruptors.
So you most likely buy water in quality Mont Roucous style bottles to avoid these sources of pollution.
Well, think again, these quality and hyper-controlled waters contain traces of toxic.
This was revealed in a survey conducted by the newspaper "60 millions de consommateurs" in the spring of 2013. Indeed, out of 47 brands of bottled water analyzed, 10 showed traces of contamination. These were mainly drug and herbicide residues.
The magazine reports that what is interesting is especially "the presence of tamoxifen, a synthetic hormone used in the treatment of breast cancer. This hormone used for chemotherapy cures has been detected in the water of Mont Roucous, Saint Yorre, Salvetat, Saint Armand (Du Clos de l'abbaye) and Carrefour Discount (Céline Cristaline).
Other drug residues of buflomedil and naftidrofuryl, two vasodilators, were detected in Hepar for the former and in Saint Armand for the latter.
Traces of atrazine and hydroxyatrazine, two weed killers banned since 2001, were found in Vittel (Grande source), Volvic (Clairvic), Cora (Saint-Pierre) and Cristaline (Louise).
Like dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) or mercury found all over the planet and among others in the ice floes and in the glaciers of the Alps, these molecules seem to be so persistent that they are still present in bottled water 15 years after their ban.
It's scary, isn't it?
Of course, to reassure us, the magazine's editor-in-chief affirms that the analyses reveal very low levels, but some consumer and health associations believe that these figures are more than enough to make us question the legislation concerning the potability and purity of mineral water, water that we pay a lot of money for.
The bottlers, of course, challenged the initial results on the grounds that the methodology used was not scientific enough and produced "false positives".
Following this challenge, in order to dispel any doubts, a second analysis of new samples of these same waters was carried out.
Conclusion: "The second analysis confirmed this presence, without us being able to explain its origin" adds "60 Millions de consommateurs". "The case is serious enough that we are launching larger-scale analyses. "