Bottled water is widely considered to be a purer choice than tap water, but a new investigation finds that this isn’t always the case.

In its test of 10 best-selling brands of bottled water, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found mixtures of 38 different pollutants including bacteria, fertilizer, and industrial chemicals in some of the tested brands at levels that were similar to tap water.

Seeing as a lot of it is simply tap water in nasty plastic bottles, I’m not at all surprised by the findings of this study. Bottled water is a scam. No, it’s worse than a scam, when you consider that the plastic bottles are most likely leeching even more stuff into that “pure” water.

“In general, the report is based on the faulty premise that if any substance is present in a bottled water product, even if it does not exceed the established regulatory limit or no standard has been set, then it’s a health concern,” International Bottled Water Association President and CEO Joe Doss says in a statement.

Oh, because the things are below the limits or is something that has no limits at all, we shouldn’t care that we are consuming it? I’m sure no legal level of cat piss in bottled water has been set, but would this guy like to drink water that had any cat piss in it at all? I’m guessing not. His statement annoys me as much as the FDA saying there is a permissible amount of melamine that can be in food products. Yuck.

My advice to anyone who wants to drink good water is to drink the water that flows from your taps. If you happen to live in a place where the water has a mineral flavor you don’t like, or you just want it to be as pure as possible, install an under-sink filtration system like we did, and then … drink up! Just as good for you as bottled water, if not better, and far, far cheaper.