New local standards such as "natural mountain spring water" have appeared in many places in China, which are different from "natural mineral water", but far from the latter in mineral indicators.
What are the secrets of seemingly clear and transparent bottled water that are not known to the public?
Query on national standards
Bottled water has no tap water standard?
The total number of indicators is small, the toxicological indicators such as mercury and formaldehyde are missing, and the coliform indicators seem to be slightly higher than tap water ... Is the national standard for bottled water lower?
Bottled water is cheaper than tap water.
What is the standard of bottled water? Is it really safer than tap water? With the continuous fermentation of Nongfu Spring's "standard storm", the problem of Huang Yue has also become a question for many people.
At present, there are four national standards for packaged drinking water in China, among which the national standard named "GB 19298 Hygienic Standard for Bottled (Barrel) Drinking Water" (hereinafter referred to as "National Standard for Bottled Water") has the widest scope of application.
Many people know that bottled water should be cleaner and safer than tap water, but in the Hygienic Standard for Drinking Water in Barrels (GB 19298-2003), the water quality index is only 2 1, which is far from the1in the National Standard for Tap Water (GB 5749-2006).
Toxicological indicators such as mercury, silver, carbon tetrachloride and formaldehyde, and common water quality indicators such as pH value and hardness did not appear in the national standard for bottled water.
An expert from the Environment Institute of China Center for Disease Control and Prevention told the reporter that the index number is less than tap water because "the source water of bottled water comes from tap water, so after tap water is tested, some items should not test bottled water."
The national standard of bottled water does require raw water to meet the national standard of tap water. However, with the continuous development of the industry, "natural water" such as Nongfu Spring no longer uses tap water as its source water.
Bottled water standard lags behind
In addition to the number of indicators, the national standard of bottled water seems to be more relaxed than tap water.
In the national standard of bottled water, the coliform group index is MPN/ 100ml≤3, but in the national standard of tap water, it is required not to be detected.
The national standards for bottled water and tap water involve different departments.
Experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Environmental Protection said that the introduction of national standards for tap water involved many departments. The national standard for tap water revised in 2006 was led by the Ministry of Health and the National Standardization Administration Committee, and was revised in conjunction with water conservancy, environmental protection, disease control and other related units.
The standard of bottled water was mainly formulated by the former Food Institute of China CDC, involving departments mainly in the health system, and the drafting unit also included a company. Regarding the question that the standard of bottled water is not as good as tap water, a person in charge of the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center told the reporter, "This is very complicated. A few words are unclear. "
Chaos of landmarks
There are many local standards for mountain springs.
Some landmarks are not updated in time, which conflicts with the national standard; The "new concept" in other landmarks is easy to mislead consumers.
The concept of mountain spring confuses consumers.
Up to now, many provinces including Yunnan, Guizhou, Hunan, Guangdong and Hebei have issued local standards for "mountain spring water", some of which are called "natural spring water" and some are called "natural mountain spring water". In fact, the country has already formulated the national standard of "natural mineral water", and various places have successively established the landmark of "mountain spring water". Why?
"Changing a word in a name can reduce too much cost for enterprises." Liao Lei, secretary general of China Mineral Water Joint Committee, told the reporter that the national standard of mineral water was formulated by the Ministry of Land and Resources. For enterprises, if the words "natural mineral water" are printed on bottled water, the mining qualification needs to be approved, and in addition, the water source in the mining area needs to be tested four times in spring, summer, autumn and winter. In his view, enterprises are keen on "mountain spring water" and have mineral water, which confuses consumers.
The landmark of mountain spring is not as good as the national standard of mineral water.
Comparing the published landmark of "mountain spring water" with the national standard of "natural mineral water", although there is only one word difference between "mountain spring water" and "mineral water", there are many differences in mineral content.
The national standard of natural mineral water stipulates the minimum content of eight minerals, and the mineral water produced by enterprises must meet at least one standard before it can be called "natural mineral water".
In contrast, some mountain spring landmarks have more relaxed requirements for mineral content. Microbiology includes local standards for bottled drinking natural spring water in Yunnan, Guizhou and Hunan provinces. The total coliforms are MPN/ 100ml≤3, while the national standard for Mineral Water is MPN/ 100ml≤0. These landmarks are not only inferior to natural mineral water, but even inferior to tap water.
Enterprises participate in the formulation of landmarks
"The new drinking water concept standards in places like this are mostly promoted by local enterprises, and they all have their own interests behind them." Liao Lei said.
The reporter found that most of these local standards were formulated with the participation of enterprises. For example, Yunnan landmarks were drafted by five bottled water enterprises, including Yunnan Dashan Beverage Co., Ltd. and Yunnan Tianwaitian Natural Beverage Co., Ltd.; Guangdong's mountain spring landmark also has the participation of Guangdong Dinghu Spring Co., Ltd. and other three enterprises.
Mystery of enterprise standards
There are hidden quality risks behind "trade secrets"
Compared with publicly available national standards and landmarks, most enterprise standards are declared as "trade secrets". These data are crucial to public health, but the media and the public don't know it.
The enterprise refused to disclose its bid.
Qiu, head of the lawyers group of China Consumers Association, said that for industrial products without national standards, industry standards and local standards, enterprises can formulate enterprise standards according to safety and health requirements, and enterprise standards must be higher than national standards or industry standards.
The reporter put forward suggestions to well-known enterprises such as Nestle, Uni-President, Coca-Cola and Master Kong to disclose enterprise standards. The above three companies all indicated that the relevant products met the national standards and refused to disclose the enterprise standards on the grounds that they involved trade secrets.
In fact, Article 26 of the Food Safety Law stipulates that food safety standards should be available for free inspection by the public.
The reliability of enterprise standards is questionable.
The reporter obtained a mineral water enterprise standard (Q/KKK 0003 S-2009) from Coca-Cola Yunnan Company through other channels, which was issued by the company and implemented from 20 10 to129 on October 29, and has been filed with the Health Department of Yunnan Province for 201.
The standard shows that the mineral water of this enterprise takes pure water as raw material, and magnesium sulfate and potassium chloride are artificially added.
Compared with the national standard of bottled water, the enterprise standard lacks the indicators of "total α radioactivity" and "total β radioactivity"; In addition, cadmium, as an important toxicological index of bottled water (cadmium is harmful to liver and kidney and serious harm to human body), is not included in the standard. In another standard obtained by the reporter, the mineral water enterprise standard issued by Dalian Peninsula Spring Beverage Factory clearly limits the content of cadmium, mg/L≤0.005, which is the same as the national standard for bottled water.
People who did not want to be named told reporters that cadmium is an important water pollutant. In recent years, cadmium pollution incidents broke out in many places in Yunnan.
At the same time, compared with the national standard of tap water, this enterprise standard of Coca-Cola has no restrictions such as mercury, chromium, cyanide and formaldehyde. Moreover, Escherichia coli is also lower than tap water.
Standard confusion
Part of mineral water is made by adding tap water.
The complex standard system seems to cover all packaged drinking water, but there are still gaps and gaps between them due to different classification methods.
The classification of five national standards is chaotic.
At present, there are five national standards for drinking water in China. Except tap water standard, the other four national standards are all packaging water standards.
Among them, from the product classification, there are "natural mineral water" and "pure water" national standards, and the rest of the packaged water is all included in the national standard of bottled water.
This standard system seems to cover all packaged drinking water, but there are still gaps and gaps between them due to the confusion of classification.
Take mineral water as an example. Several mineral water enterprise standards obtained by the reporter show that some refer to the national standard of pure water and some refer to the national standard of bottled water. In this way, although they are all called "mineral water", the specific technological process and water quality indicators vary greatly among different enterprises.
For example, the mineral water standard of Coca-Cola Yunnan Company mentioned above, its product water source is pure water, and the product standard is formulated with reference to the national standard of pure water; The enterprise standard of Dalian Peninsula Spring Beverage Factory (Q/DBD0002S-20 12) shows that their mineral water source is tap water, not pure water, and most indicators in the enterprise standard refer to the national standard of bottled water.
This means that the so-called mineral water is also made of pure water and food additives, while others are added with tap water.
Bottled water lacks a unified national standard.
The confusion of drinking water management standards has attracted the attention of some departments and experts.
Wang Xiuyan, vice-chairman of the China Mineral Water Joint Committee, believes that China lacks an effective review, update and revision mechanism. She suggested that relevant departments should set up an independent third-party standard audit committee with the participation of fixed experts to improve the efficiency of revision, approval and update of various drinking water standards.
Sparse detection
Heavy metals and other indicators are detected once every six months.
Before bottled water leaves the factory, most of them only detect sensory and microbial indicators, while more indicators such as heavy metals and organic matter are often detected once every six months.
Only a few criteria were detected.
Even if these enterprise standards conform to the national regulations, it is doubtful whether the ex-factory products can really be qualified.
The quality of bottled water is worrying.
A scholar from the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, who asked not to be named, told reporters that there are certain quality concerns in the market, such as mineral water and natural water. He believes that mineral water is an artificially added mineralizer, and there is a lack of research on whether and how much it can be added.
Zhang Shufang, director of the Institute of Public Health, Henan Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He investigated the content of bromate (a potential carcinogen) in bottled drinking water on the market. The results show that the qualified rate of mineral water is only 50%, mineral water is 66.7%, and mountain spring water is 7 1.4%.
What is the overall quality of packaging water in China market at present?
With bottled water in my hand, I can't help but hesitate. Is the bottled water I drink every day safe and healthy?
(Source: Network)