I’m sure your company as major brand holds themselves to a higher standard, which is great, and rules for contaminant levels are more or less comparable between FDA (bottled water) and EPA (tap water). BUT the FDA generally requires less sampling and less transparency. For example, E. coli
weekly testing for bottlers while utilities
test more frequently (except for tiny wells).
And you can easily look up water utilities test results and violations. I’m not aware of anything similar for bottlers.
And the FDA lags behind the EPA in regulating compounds. Right now you can see this with PFAS — the EPA’s regulations are a bit complex but range from 2-5 parts per trillion for the six compounds they are targeting. The FDA is required to look into it since the EPA did, but hasn’t established anything yet.
How was the 547 days arrived at? Is that the best case scenario in ideal conditions, the average case, or worst case scenario? That doesn’t really seem to be borne out by the article cited in the beginning or
publicized tests like this one.