Investigating the Concentration of Heavy Metals in Bottled Water and Comparing with its Standard: Case Study

Today, bottled waters have attracted the assurance of consumers as one of the important drinking water supply resources, such that in some regions, the use of bottled waters has replaced the drinking water distribution system. The present study was carried out with the aim of measuring and determining the heavy metals in bottled water across a number of brands produced in Iran and comparing it with the drinking water standard.
In this descriptive-cross-sectional study, two different brands of bottled water were randomly sampled from the supermarket. To measure the heavy metals of interest, the samples were concentrated and then the concentration of some heavy metals such as copper, zinc, nickel, iron, aluminum, lead, and cadmium ions were measured by atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The mean concentration of ions was calculated in each brand and then compared with amount of standards.
Brand No. 1, the concentration of zinc ion was larger in Brand 2 while in Brand No. 2 had larger copper, nickel, and aluminum ions. The results indicated that the concentration of the measured metal ions were below the allowable limit of drinking water standard across all of the studied samples.
Based on the obtained results from the investigated parameters, it can be concluded that the bottled water of both brands poses no health issue and is drinkable. Considering the changes in the concentration of ions and the increasing trend of consumption of bottled waters, their monitoring and qualitative control of pollutants are very crucial in terms of public health.