China's confusing standards for bottled water

The concerns over bottled water quality may have started with Nongfu Spring, but as it turns out, China's whole bottled-water industry is lacking universal standards that companies need to abide by.

The fact is, bottled-water companies in China adopt a variety of water standards, including national standards made by different ministries, standards made by local governments and even those made by the companies themselves. Another problem is, while the most-used national standard for bottled water has 21 quality indicators, the standard for TAP WATER has more than 100.

That raises questions of whether tap water has better quality standards than bottled water. The good thing is that health authorities in China are now working to unify different existing quality standards. A new, unified national standard will come out by the end of 2015.