ABNRF independent lab study · February 27, 2026

What's actually in your bottled water

Eight popular bottled waters, sent to an independent lab and run through three panels: heavy metals, BPA and PFAS. Here are the results, and what the numbers actually mean.

Headlines say “toxic.” Social posts cherry-pick one number. Warning labels show up with no explanation. That's fear without context. The questions that matter are how much, compared to what, and over what timeframe. So we asked a lab.

Open the results
The eight bottled waters tested, lined up on a kitchen counter: Icelandic Glacial, Voss, Mountain Valley, Acqua Panna, Saratoga, Deer Park, Fiji and Evian.
Fig. 1 · The eight bottles testedStill from Paul's video

What went to the lab

Eight bottles. Three panels. One independent lab.

5 in glass, 3 in plastic. Every bottle was tested for five heavy metals, for BPA, and for PFAS, the “forever chemicals.”

Metals
Aluminum, lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury
Plastics
BPA (bisphenol A) and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances)
Units
Reported by the lab in mg/L, converted to parts per billion so they sit next to the EPA benchmarks
  1. Icelandic GlacialGlass
  2. VossGlass
  3. Mountain ValleyGlass
  4. Acqua PannaGlass
  5. SaratogaGlass
  6. Deer ParkPlastic
  7. FijiPlastic
  8. EvianPlastic

The results

Six came back below the lab's limit. Two came back with a number.

That's the heavy metal panel. Which two, how much, and how far from the EPA limit each one sits is the part worth reading. Enter your email and the full ABNRF study opens right here on this page.

  1. The full grid: eight brands, five metals, every value the lab reported.
  2. Which two plastic bottles carried a quantified detection, and how far each sits from the EPA limit.
  3. The three ABNRF ranked cleanest in this analysis, and the reasoning.
  4. The BPA and PFAS traces, and why “below the reporting limit” isn’t the same as “not there.”

Results access

ABNRF · 2026-02-27

Open the full results

Every brand, every metal, every number. Free, and it opens instantly.

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This study was conducted and published by the Animal Based Nutrition Research Foundation and is reproduced here in full. Read it at abnrf.org. Nothing here is medical advice.