Food Safety and Quality

Stronger FDA Standards and Oversight Needed for Bottled Water Gao ID: RCED-91-67 March 12, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO assessed the adequacy of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) bottled water standards, focusing on the: (1) effectiveness of the FDA oversight program; (2) regulation of drinking water sold in interstate commerce; and (3) reliability of terms and graphics used on bottled water labels.

GAO found that FDA: (1) did not comply with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act's (FFDCA) requirement for timely action on setting maximum levels for bottled water quality standards; (2) exempted mineral water from those standards; (3) and some state regulators were not required to test for contaminants in bottled and mineral water, which could have levels of potentially harmful contaminants not allowed in public drinking water; (4) did not make full use of state inspection and test results and could not ensure that bottlers and bottled water products met existing federal regulations and standards; (5) tested for 5 or fewer of 31 contaminants for which there were standards in 94 percent of the tests GAO reviewed; (6) did not have a complete inventory of bottlers, and lacked jurisdiction to inspect foreign bottling operations; and (7) could improve its oversight of bottled water firms and products by routinely using state inspection and testing results.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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