Food Safety and Quality

In response to the February 1990 voluntary recall of benzene-contaminated Perrier mineral water and to gather information on proposed bottled water standards, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) surveyed domestic and imported bottled waters. On the basis of preliminary survey results, FDA testified before Congress in April 1991 that the nation's bottled water was safe. GAO reviewed the adequacy of FDA's 1990 Bottled Water Survey. This report looks at whether (1) FDA's survey results were representative of the nation's bottled water supply, (2) FDA's tests covered all regulated contaminants, and (3) FDA's test for unregulated contaminants was warranted. GAO also identifies ways to improve oversight of the bottled water industry.

GAO found that: (1) FDA did not base the 1990 bottled water survey on a probability sample or use any formal design that considered or estimated the cost of such a survey; (2) the survey did not provide an adequate basis for the FDA statement that bottled water was safe, since FDA only inspected 49 domestic bottled water plants and tested 112 domestic and imported water samples; (3) to control costs, FDA instructed its districts to test the selected samples for only 9 of 31 regulated contaminants; (4) FDA also tested for 11 unregulated contaminants to determine the level of bacteria present and to detect and quantify the level of volatile organic chemicals; and (5) the decision to test for unregulated contaminants was warranted because FDA was considering new standards for those contaminants, which included benzene, which received much media attention, and the cost of performing those tests was only about 4 percent of the total survey cost of $850,000.

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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