By Gene Ayres

A reader commented, in regards to last week's Dispatch article, that I must be very paranoid to be so worried about the contents of bottled water, let alone the bottles themselves. Of course, my initial response was, like the old 60s saying, “just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me.”

But in fairness, no, I don't think anyone is out to get me or you with their bottled water, other than get your money that you might better spend elsewhere. So, yes, maybe I did sound a bit paranoid last week. After all, we're talking about bottled water here, not nuclear weapons or terrorist plots. We bloggers do at times tend towards hyperbolic statements, I admit. This may be because there is so much hyperbole coming out of the rest of the media these days, and political discourse (e.g. the way attending a community organizing meeting with one reformed former Sixties radical equates to “palling around with terrorists.”) And “mainstream” journalists, by contrast, have been cowed into total unwillingness to write or say anything that might offend the loud and powerful, thus reduced to such spineless reporting as “according to some Democrats, Republicans have been exaggerating their claims that Mr. Obama has been associating with Al Quaida terrorists,” and so on.

The reader also commented that the air in New York is very polluted, but that doesn't mean he, or she, or anyone is necessarily going to get sick by visiting there, offering, as proof, that he or she in fact did visit there recently and felt perfectly fine. Fair enough. Which, of course, is the problem, as I've said, with any environmental hazard. Just because ten factories are dumping PCBs into Puget Sound doesn't prove that's why so many whales are dying of lesions. Other whales are doing just fine, and it's perfectly possible that particular family of whales has a genetic defect that causes those lesions. Or they are allergic to seaweed. Who knows? And who can prove it?

Back in the 70s, executives from big tobacco companies were swearing oaths before Congress that there was no evidence that tobacco was a health hazard, let alone caused cancer. This was based on such arguments as “my uncle Albert smoked until he was 97 and never had so much as a sniffle.” Well, in fact I myself met a man once who was well into his 90s, had been a lifelong smoker, and showed no ill effects. My father, by contrast, never smoked a single cigarette in his life and died of emphysema. As it happened (and this was before smoking laws went into effect, of course) he worked in an office where everyone else smoked. Which happened to be in New York City. And I suppose you could also argue that it was therefore his own fault, he could have worked somewhere else, and so on. Which, it could further be argued, proves that those tobacco executives were right, and thus, so is my reader. (And it should also be noted that, while the American Medical Association now confirms that 500,000 people die every year from tobacco-related illnesses, even today in this country alone, no tobacco executive has yet served any time in jail. Because, after all, it would be outrageous to suggest that all those deaths are somehow their fault!)

Nor will any defense contractor serve time, or even pay a fine for dumping those perchlorates, and so on. Our justice system is based, after all, on the necessity for “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” And thus we can make all the assertions and innuendo we want to about anybody, any time, and it doesn't mean a thing. Unless, of course, you want to believe it. And thus scientists can offer proof until they are blue in the face that the Earth is 5 billion years old, but if you go to Sarah Palin's church you know better, it's only 5000 years old, because the pastor says so, and there's no arguing with God.

And so I can argue until I am blue in the face and present a dozen research studies that say certain chemicals are dangerous to your health and it doesn't matter if you like bottled water, think it tastes great, you feel just fine thank you very much, and therefore I should shut up and sit down. And of course, you may be absolutely right, and you have every right to spend your hard-earned (or maybe inherited, who knows) money on that stuff, and drink all you want, and you may well live to be 90, and even smoke too, and visit New York regularly too, and more power to you.

My point is, that as with tobacco, there is a cumulative effect, over time, and that sooner or later statistics will back it up, and my own hyperbolic warnings are just my way of cutting through the fog of cynicism, skepticism and disbelief to say that maybe there are times when caution is the better part of valor, that we might just want to play it safe. Because the bottom line is that bottled water really does cost a whole lot more than tap water, and whether or not there's hard proof that it's bad for you, it is certainly no better. So maybe, just maybe, you could spend that money on something else, and be no worse off, and maybe avoid an unnecessary risk, and still boost the economy, and feel good too.

Or you could put that money in the bank, in case you really need it some day. Just a thought.