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German Water Bottle – What’s Going on?

with 2 comments

Yesterday, my girlfriend bought a water bottle. When I saw the back, my immediate reaction was a positive surprise, because what I saw, seemed to be a hydrogeologic cross-section. And that can’t be a bad thing, right?

Label of German water bottle

Label of a German Water Bottle

Unfortunately, some thoughts came to my mind which don’t add up everywhere… Let’s look a little closer at that label:

Enlarged Label

Enlarged Label of a German Water Bottle

  • The first layer, indicated in green, is labeled “earth- and rock- layers” — does the green indicate that in these layers are living plants? Why does the text indicate that there are multiple layers, and the picture shows only one green layer?
  • The second layer is called “ground- and surface water”. Why should they be mixed? And why is the surface water below the ground surface under earth- and rock- layers? It is shaded in blue, I guess indicating the presence of water. What does the arrow in that layer imply? Why is there a relatively thin, darker blue layer?
  • The next layer down in the sequence is shaded in grey and labeled “water impermeable layer”. So this layer is a steel plate?
  • The bottom most layer is labeled “Ice-ageSpring – the perfectly protected mineral water from the ice-age”. This layer is indicated by a really nice variable shading in blue in white resembling a glacier. Does that mean there’s a glacier down there? Why is that layer perfectly protected? By the water-impermeable layer on top? Does it mean that layer is also impermeable for contaminants? The arrow on top, pointing vertically towards ground surface indicates input from “agriculture and industry” — where does that input go? “Just” into ground- and surface water?
  • The boundaries of all the layers are parallel, and all except the bottom most layers have constant thickness everywhere.

All these questions in my mind, I thought I’d strive for clarification, and have a look at the webpage that the label indicates. This is what I found under the section “expert opinion“:

„EiszeitQuell weist nur alte, gereifte Grundwasserkomponenten auf. Das eiszeitliche Mineralwasservorkommen wird gegen Umwelteinflüsse in idealer Weise abgeschirmt. Die ausgewogene Zusammensetzung der Inhaltsstoffe und das Fehlen von anthropogen bedingten, vom Menschen verursachten Stoffen wie Nitrat oder Nitrit bewirken unter anderem seine in zahlreichen Untersuchungen nachgewiesene ursprüngliche Reinheit. Es ist natriumarm und für die Zubereitung von Säuglingsnahrung geeignet.“

If you don’t understand German, and even if you put this only into the google translating service, you will notice, that they talk about this water as if it was the main course in a five star restaurant!

What was the company thinking? Is there anything we could do?

Written by Claus

January 11th, 2009 at 6:18 am

Posted in Uncategorized

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2 Responses to 'German Water Bottle – What’s Going on?'

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  1. Well, that bottle is well known to me, since the water is bottled just a few kilometers from my hometown. I was wondering as well about that “nice” illustration. And I have an additional question: If the well and drilling is down 400m, is the two-storied house than 200m high, 100m each floor? Anyway, it’s a little bit like drilling for oil. The water was down there for 10 000 years (and because of the impermeable layer without recharge) and now they we are drinking in in a few decades?!

    j

    11 Jan 09 at 3:04 pm

  2. “EiszeitQuell weist nur alte, gereifte Grundwasserkomponenten auf.”

    Can anyone tell me how water can mature?

    t

    12 Jan 09 at 9:27 am

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