What’s Up with Water – Speaking of Water – Who Trusts the Tap (Bonus Episode)

Study looks at U.S. tap and bottled water consumption

Bottled Water in Flint, Michigan. Photo by J. Carl Ganter.

By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue

More and more people are asking a question once thought preposterous in the United States. That question: do I trust my tap water? It turns out that the answer is very different for different groups of people.

Circle of Blue’s Brett Walton spoke with Asher Rosinger, an assistant professor of biobehavioral health and anthropology at Penn State University. Rosinger was the lead author for a study published in February that found minorities in the U.S. consume less tap water and are more likely to drink bottled water.

“I know from personal experience that experiences around water, particularly negative ones, can change our behavior for long periods of time,” Rosinger said.

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Brett Walton

Brett writes about agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and the politics and economics of water in the United States. He also writes the Federal Water Tap, Circle of Blue’s weekly digest of U.S. government water news. He is the winner of two Society of Environmental Journalists reporting awards, one of the top honors in American environmental journalism: first place for explanatory reporting for a series on septic system pollution in the United States(2016) and third place for beat reporting in a small market (2014). He received the Sierra Club’s Distinguished Service Award in 2018. Brett lives in Seattle, where he hikes the mountains and bakes pies. Contact Brett Walton