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

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.