The latest inspection on food and additives by the National Food and Drug Administration shows that 791 kinds of beverages do not meet the national safety standards, 775 of which are bottled purified water and water cooler bottles.
According to the sample inspection results, 22.75% of bottled purified water and 4.75% of bottled mineral water failed to meet the standard, while nearly 30% of water cooler bottles contain more bacteria than safety standards in China allow.
The 19-liter water cooler buckets that failed the tests, which featured items such as the total bacterial count, the level of bromate, nitrite, Escherichia Coli, mold and yeast etc., include popular brands in China such as Wahaha and C’estbon.
Chinese bottled water producers have often found themselves in trouble in recent years. Just last year, the country’s major bottled water producer Nongfu Spring Co. was under fire for failing to meet quality standards established by the central government for drinking water, and stood accused of selling water that contained a higher level of chemicals than even tap water is allowed to contain, according to national standards.
According to an earlier report by Beijing News, China still uses standards borrowed from the Soviet Union over 20 years ago to test the safety of bottled water samples.
China has more than 5,000 standards on food quality and hygiene set by different government departments, said Chen Xiaohong, vice-minister of the former health ministry, adding that “some of them were overlapping while some contradicted one another.”
On top of lax regulation of the country’s bottled water industry and questionable practices carried out by producers — such as recirculating water bottles without sanitizing them and simply filling them with tap water without following proper purification procedures — pollution throughout the country also remains a contributing factor for the low quality of bottled water.
This October, Shenzhen police also unearthed an operation producing and selling fake bottled water, arresting eight suspects and seizing assets of RMB 5 million.
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