Q: Is Bottled Water regulated?
A: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fully regulates bottled water as a packaged food product and requires bottled water to adhere to FDA's extensive food safety, labeling and inspection requirements. States also inspect and permit bottled water facilities, as well as local health departments.
Q: What is Spring Water?
A: Bottled Spring Water is derived from an underground formation from which water flows naturally to the surface of the earth. Spring water must be collected only at the spring or through a borehole tapping the underground formation feeding the spring. Spring water collected with the use of an external force must be from the same underground stratum as the spring and must have all of the physical properties before treatment, and be of the same compositionand quality as the water that flows naturally to the surface of the earth.
Q: How is bottled water different than tap water?
A: Bottled Water is produced and distributed as a packaged food product and made specifically for drinking. As a packaged food product, bottled water must adhere to the FDA Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP's) required of all FDA-regulated food products as well as specific GMP's unique to bottled water production and packaging. GMP's require that each container of bottled water is produced in a sanitary environment and packaged in sanitary, safety sealed containers that are approved by the FDA for food contact. Bottled water is subject to food recall, and FDA misbranding and food adulteration provisions, which help ensure that consumers receive safe, high quality bottled water and protects consumers from substandard products.
In addition members of IBWA abide by the IBWA Code of Practice, which incorporates a system called HACCP (Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points). This system was developed by the FDA & US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) & adopted by IBWA as a science-based approach to helping ensure safety in every step of the bottled water process.
Taste is another reason consumers choose bottled water. Chlorine and or Chloramine, is most often used to disinfect tap water and can leave an aftertaste. At Tyler Mountain Water we use ozone, a form of super charged oxygen and UV (Ultraviolet disinfection light) as the final disinfecting agents, neither of which leaves an aftertaste.
Tyler Mountain Bottled waters provide consumers with consistent safety, high quality, good taste and convenient portability. To help ensure that bottled water is safe and of the highest quality possible, all IBWA members use one or more of the following steps found in a milti-barrier approach: source protection & monitoring, reverse osmosis, distillation, micron filtration, ozonation & disinfection.