I know that local environmentalists will be glad to see the latest erosion in Nutmeggers’ love of bottled water. Seen in the Courant:
State Rep. Beth Bye, a Democrat from West Hartford has a simple idea that promises to promote health, cut costs of state government, help the environment and reduce our thirst for petroleum: Encourage state workers to drink tap water instead of the bottled variety.[...]
Thanks to some of the most stringent regulations in the country for protecting watershed lands and the investment of millions of dollars annually in state and federal funds, Connecticut enjoys some of the safest drinking water in the nation.
That achievement ought to be a wellspring of pride and confidence. Yet in a strange twist, Ms. Bye notes that state government — including the state Department of Public Health, the agency charged with protecting Connecticut’s public drinking-water supplies — is trucking in bottled water from Maine.[...]
Ms. Bye staged an informal tasting. Each of 50 participants was asked to taste four unidentified samples of drinking water; two were from the tap and two were from the bottle. Only two tasters correctly identified the source of all four samples. One got three out of four right.
The results of the taste testing are actually pretty remarkable. If all 50 participants had made true, random guesses, you’d expect to see 3 people correctly pick all 4, and 12 or 13 to be correct on 3 out of 4.
However, the odds of only 3 people getting at least 3 out of 4 right, if it were purely random, is less than 0.001%
I think it’s safe to say that that sample of taste-testers was outright wrong when it comes to differentiating tap water from bottled watter.
