On Thursday afternoon in the San Fernando Valley, with temperatures hovering just below 100 degrees, Araceli Gurrola filled a 5-gallon plastic jug with water from a vending machine.   

"I never drink from the sink. Never," Gurrola said as she struggled to lift the cumbersome container now full of water into the back seat of her car.

Gurrola, like most people, thinks tap water is unsafe.  Her unwillingness to drink tap water is in large part because of where she is from. Gurrola, who was born and raised in Mexico City, said the water there is corrosive, harmful and undrinkable.  

"Mostly I go to vending machines to buy water.  Only two times a month we buy bottled waters," Gurrola said. "If I go on the street I buy bottled water, but I never drink tap water."

While the water in Los Angeles is cleaner, Gurrola still will not drink it.

"Some of the more recent immigrant populations can't drink the water where they're from, it's not safe and not regulated or tested like ours is so they have to drink filtered water or bottled water," Tracey Burke, Associate Public Affairs Representative for the Water Replenishment District of Southern California said.  "When they come here they don't know that they can drink the tap water so they continue to buy bottled water."

Municipal water sources in Southern California are tested every day for up to 90 different known contaminants, ensuring the safety and reliability of tap water.  Still, public distrust of tap water has made bottled water a first choice to many--increasing the amount of plastic in landfills and threatening the environment.

Only 15 percent of all plastic water bottles were recycled last year, according to the Water Replenishment District of Southern California.  Eighty percent of all bottles in landfills are plastic water bottles that did not get recycled.  The United States spends $43 billion a year making sure the drinking water is safe.  

According to Food and Water Watch, a consumer organization aimed at keeping food and water safe and accessible for everyone, 40 percent of all bottled water is really filtered tap water.  

"In most places, tap water is absolutely safe to drink. In fact, tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, and there are strict standards that municipal sources have to meet in order to deliver water to everyday people in their houses," said Noah Garrison, project attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "As a result, tap water is very safe."

The fear of tap water is not isolated to any one group of people. Mayme Stansfield, 25, a graduate student at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, scoffed at the idea of drinking tap water.   

"It tastes thick and not fresh.  It could be the pipes but I don't drink it," Stansfield said. "It seems like it could be unsafe because it smells funny and sometimes it looks kind of murky."

What Stansfield and Gurrola do not know is the bottled water they choose to drink is actually less regulated than the tap they shy away from.  It may look clearer and taste crisper, but bottled water is held to lower standards than tap water.

"There is absolutely nothing out there to show that bottled water is any safer than what's coming out of your tap," Garrison said. "In most instances the tap water is much more highly regulated and may be purer in some ways than bottled water, and the environmental consequences of drinking bottled water should urge everybody to shift over to drinking tap water."

While the taste and color of tap water may be slightly off, the quality of the water meets or exceeds regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency. The slight odor often detected in tap water is chlorine, a chemical used to kill bacteria and make the water safer to drink.

"Contaminants that may be present include lead, arsenic, bacteria and other pathogens, but again, most of those contaminants, if not all of concern, are tested for at the municipal water source," Garrison said.

According to Renee Maas, a representative for Food and Water Watch, there is added concern over the safety of bottled water because of the bottles themselves.  She said there have been many studies that suggest the plastic from water bottles leaches into the water.

In a study in Scientific America, the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA), a key building block of plastic, was shown to cause increased cancer cell growth.  When a plastic container or bottle is exposed to hot water the chemical leaches out of the plastic 55 times faster than normal.  However, the EPA and FDA have deemed the level of BPA found in consumer products, including water bottles, to be acceptable.  

In addition to the potential health risks posed by plastic bottles, the amount of fuel needed each year to produce all of the bottles used for bottling water is staggering. According to Maas, it takes 17 million barrels of petroleum a year to make enough bottles for the water in the United States alone.

The Water Replenishment District of Southern California serves 43 cities in the region, delivering clean tap water to over 4 million people.  The ground water management agency tests each of their wells daily for the 90 known contaminants in the area.  If a trace level of contaminate is detected, the well is immediately shut down and cleaned until levels are back to normal.

Burke said both tap and bottled water are held to high safety standards. Tap, however, is tested more often and the results of the tests are available to the public.

"Your water company has to produce a Consumer Confidence Report every year listing all of the different sources of the water and what's in it," Burke said. "You don't get that from bottled water, you don't know exactly what's in it."

The cost of a bottle of water on average is $1.50.  In the current economy, people are paying for a resource that is virtually free in every household.  The cost of a five-year supply of bottled water is around $1,000. The same amount of tap water is just under $2.00.  

"The cost [of bottled water] is prohibitive, it's like drinking gasoline," Burke said.  It's thousands of times more than tap water."