Water, water everywhere and not a safe drop to drink—except in bottles.
You’d expect supermarket shelves to be brimming with the so-called pure stuff in Los Angeles and other metropolitan areas without access to nearby glacial runoffs.
But not in the rain meccas of the Pacific Northwest, where the delicious liquid comes straight from pristine watersheds of Mts. Hood and Rainier. Yep, there too.
The bottled-water craze started in the 1950s when survivalist nuts claimed that fluoridated tap flows were part of a Communist plot to poison the precious bodily fluids of America.
Now the $3-billion-a-year, unregulated purity boom has swelled because of concerns about lead, fecal matter and—yes—heart disease allegedly caused by chlorine.
The latest phenomenon isn’t confined to cubicles occupied by yuppies and the X-Generation. Even school children routinely suck on water bottles.
Expect another rush for liquid purity because of Osama’s threat to poison America’s reservoirs. (23 JUNE 2002)
