TDS Explained

TDS stands for Total Dissolved Solids. When discussing bottled water, TDS generally refers to the mineral content. Minerals are needed by the human body to maintain good health. Great Glacier water provides essential electrolytes including calcium, magnesium and potassium. Some of these substances can be obtained from the food we eat in a healthy diet, but in this age of overly processed foods and fast food restaurants, we sometimes are lacking in these necessary minerals. Additionally, these are the very elements that give water its taste, which was instrumental in Great Glacier winning the Gold Medal in the Berkeley Springs International water tasting event, the largest and longest running judging of its kind in the world.

Some bottled water companies like to equate extremely low TDS as an example of their purity. Make no mistake, minerals are not impurities! If you want absolutely unsatisfying tasteless water without any minerals, then you should drink distilled waster which is most often sold for batteries and steam irons. There is no reason to import near-distilled water from Iceland or wherever super low TDS waters come from. There are even some studies that purport that drinking water with extremely low TDS strips the body of some of those vital nutrients already obtained from food or other sources.

Great Glacier water is constantly tested in our own labs, and is regulated by state and federal agencies to maintain absolutely the highest quality and purity. Drink Great Glacier Bottled Water; you'll love the "Healthy taste".

The Great Glacier Study of Bisphenol-A In Five Gallon Plastic Bottles Containing Drinking Water

The Great Glacier water company has always been a responsible steward of the health and environmental concerns of its customers. Our company president, Tom Rogers, was an employee of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for many years.

Recent News stories have voiced health concerns regarding Bisphenol A, a chemical present in many types of plastic bottles, linings of cans, and medical devices. Though the FDA has stated that there is no risk using products containing the chemical, counter arguments suggest that the FDA was influenced or their studies funded by a chemical industry that has a financial stake in the continued use of such products.

To help dispel this "tainted FDA" line of doubt, we have studied respected scientific data from the European Union, Japan, and Greece; all of which supports the no harm theory of these products that have caused no problems in over 40 years of use.

This leaves the burden of deciding which story to believe on the shoulders of the consumer. It is important to note that even the most negative of stories uses the words: "Preliminary studies". Further, low doses of Bisphenol A were fed to or injected in laboratory animals (primarily rats) and showed limited evidence of preponderance of urinary tract problems, precancerous tumors, and early puberty. From these studies of direct exposure they conclude that the possible effects on humans cannot be dismissed.

No matter which containers or medical devices are questioned, there is a huge difference between the amount injected or fed to lab animals and that which may or may not migrate to humans by the very exposure of Bisphenol A impregnated products to the food that they eat or the water that they drink. Without getting too scientific, let me give some simple statistics:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's reference dose for humans for Bisphenol A is 0.05 mg/kg/day, which is a level expected to cause no adverse effects after a lifetime of exposure. EPA's No Observable Adverse Effect Level (NOAEL) for animals for Bisphenol A is 50 mg/kg/day. This is consistent with all of the testing done on Bisphenol A. EPA has stated that "A causal relationship between exposure to a specific environmental agent and an adverse health effect in human operating via endocrine disruption has not been established." Studies on human exposure to Bisphenol A, including a recent study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, consistently indicate that human exposure to Bisphenol A is less than 0.0001 mg/kg/day, which is more than 500 times below the EPA reference dose and more than 500,000 times below the no effect level.

Great Glacier, like all other major home and office delivery companies uses a recyclable #7 Polycarbonate bottle. We will continue to use this bottle based on the exhaustive studies performed by responsible scientific research. We feel that the recent news stories are a result of journalistic sensationalism, more interested in urban legend than fact. One only has to think back to the cyclamate scare, the aspartame scare, and any number of social crises that didn't materialize to realize that not all news is based on fact.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

Great Glacier sells multiple hundreds of thousands of half-liter bottles of premium artesian water every year. Recent environmental activists have zeroed in on the bottled water industry as a major cause of pollution. Indeed our bottles are made of plastic but it is 100% recyclable. It is the responsibility of the consumer to dispose of or recycle all of their products responsibly; this includes aluminum, cardboard and newspaper. There are certainly hundreds of other uses for plastic, some of which are not recyclable. Plastic bottles are used for cosmetics, laundry soap, milk, condiments and many other items. Additionally, plastic grocery and garbage bags automobile parts and a multitude of other products use much more plastic than the bottled water industry. I'm not sure why our industry has been singled out, other than it is "our turn". A few years ago, disposable diapers were the bane of the environmental world and it was touted that they would soon fill all available land fill areas. That crisis that wasn't seems to have faded, and I'm sure we will generate another crisis to take the place of water bottles soon.

Some water companies have decided to "solve the problem" by making a thinner bottle so flimsy that there is a constant fear of puncture, (not a good thing in a fanny pack). I don't see how this solves any problems; a carelessly discarded bottle is just as unsightly whether it weighs 12 grams or 24 grams. I think that this is a way to lower the cost of their product under the auspices of environmental activism.

There is a bottle made from cornstarch that holds up fairly well. We have looked into this product, but find it impractical. You see, it looks like a plastic bottle but it has to be recycled in a compost heap with grass clippings, leaves and the like. If it were to be placed in the plastic recyclables, it would ruin the whole batch of recycled plastic causing much more harm than good.

Despite the disclaimer of harm from the FDA and EPA regarding Bisphenol A, our half-liter bottles are made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and contain none.