BOTTLED WATER SOLD IN THE TRIPOLI MARKETS: CHALLENGES AND SHORTCOMINGS

Bottles of water, by different trademarks which lack of the standard specifications, have overwhelmed shops and markets in Libya. Despite the fact that the number of plants and factories of bottled water is increasing rapidly, there has not been any serious intention on the part of governmental bodies to take action against the unlicensed factories. This has led to the quality of bottled water in many cases violating the required standards of chemical and physical properties for the potable water, which threatens the public health. The aim of this paper was first, to investigate whether if these bottled water do really meets the international and Libyan standards of bottled water, and second to point out the actions taken by the responsible authorities as well as other related governmental/non-governmental organizations. The paper examined four random samples of bottled water sold in Tripoli during January 2019 and measured some of its physicochemical properties, such as total dissolved solids (TDS), pH, sodium, potassium and calcium. The results indicated that all the experimental values were different from what was written on the samples’ labels. The percentage of these differences ranged from 2% to 650 %. The statistical data of TDS (labeled-measured) was found to be 78.725 mg/l with a standard deviation of 33.91758 mg/l, and t-test with p = 0.019 (P ≤ 0.05), which means results are significant. It was also observed that all samples violated the Libyan standards in not providing all the required data on their labels; 25% of samples do not include water source, 50% of samples do not mention the source of the water, 75% of samples do not mention license number, and 50% of samples do not provide any written statement regarding the storage conditions, which means that all the samples must be withdrawn from the market without the need for chemical or biological testing.