Real Risk of Arsenic in Bottled Water

The article from Consumer Reports, "Arsenic in Some Bottled Water Brands at Unsafe Levels, Consumer Reports Says" grabbed a lot of press this month.  Oh no, something else I can't consume?  Only if you buy into the spin that looks more to grab readership than to provide sound science.

A rebuttal to that article was posted in Forbes and goes into detail dissecting the wording used.
A few keys, .

• Only one out of 130 bottles tested was in excess of FDA's limit of 10 ppb,..some obscure brand Peñafiel that had 17 ppb. 
• Five were higher than 3 but less than 10, which the article claimed that 3 should be the limit according to the report (but no reason why 3 instead of 10 is a better number).

So the summary from Forbes, "The primary spin-free numbers in the Consumer Reports article are that, of the 130 brands of bottled water examined for arsenic, 1 exceeded F.D.A. standards. And our refrigerators aren’t exactly teeming with that 1 – if you mixed all the bottled water in the world in a massive vat, Peñafiel would probably make up less than 3 parts per billion itself."

The article could have been titled "No real risk of arsenic in your bottled water", but that would not have garnered much of any mass media attention.  Not that we shouldn't be looking and controlling arsenic when levels are high.  A 2013 NY Times article points out that there are many place in the world, including the US where levels can range from 10 to 1000 ppb.

Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanschwarz/2019/04/22/arsenic-in-water-scare-raises-risk-for-eye-rolling/#62c92239772d
Arsenic-In-Water Scare Raises Risk For Eye-Rolling
Alan Schwarz 
Apr 22, 2019, 09:40am

The news on Thursday spawned spit-takes nationwide. Consumer Reports revealed the results from its deep dive into bottled water: some brands were found to have notable levels of arsenic. You know, arsenic -- the stuff that ranks just below cyanide and Tucker Carlson on the depth chart of toxic substances.

The investigation, which you can read here, was headlined: “Arsenic in Some Bottled Water Brands at Unsafe Levels, Consumer Reports Says.” CR promoted the story by ominously tweeting, “Before you reach for that bottled water, here’s what you need to know…”

Unfortunately, what you really needed to know is that your bottled water is almost certainly just fine. This story was a textbook case of how the media can translate factual numbers into exploitive words.

CR breathlessly reported that it had examined records and samples of 130 different brands of bottled water, and: