Stable hydrogen and oxygen isotope abundance of major bottled water brands sold in the United Kingdom

Ersek, Vasile, Sharples, Jamie and Williams, Thomas (2022) Stable hydrogen and oxygen isotope abundance of major bottled water brands sold in the United Kingdom. Isotopes in Environmental and Health Studies, 58 (2). pp. 113-120. ISSN 1025-6016

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Abstract

Bottled water in the UK has a ~20 % share of the soft drinks market with a sales value of >£1.5 billion. Bottled water is susceptible to fraud and it is important to characterise the chemical signature of aquifers used by the bottled water industry. Measuring 18O/16O and 2H/1H ratios in bottled water is one important step in fraud prevention and aquifer characterisation as these ratios in groundwater tend to be stable or change very slowly through time. Here we characterise the isotopic signature of 30 brands of bottled water sold in the UK. The average δ18O of bottled waters is –7.4 and –48.4 for δ2H. This isotopic composition is closely related to that of the annual rainfall and follows latitudinal and longitudinal gradients which combine to explain 77 % of the δ18O variance.

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