Bottled Water

These events take place   Mondays Irish Pipe and Drum Parade, Irish Pipe and Drum Parade, 7:30-9 p.m. 609-523-1602 or www.dowildwood.com . Beach Aerobics, Lou Booth Amphitheater, 2nd and Ocean avenues, North Wildwood. 8:30 a.m. $5 per class. Please bring exact change and bottled water. 609-522-2955. Captain Ocean's Ecological Program, Rambler Road and the Beach, Wildwood Crest. Educational presentation of ocean and sea life. 8 a.m. Free. 609-522-2919.

It's water with a twist. No, not a twist of lemon or lime - a twist of your wrist. Flip a quarter into a vending machine, fill the container you brought, and walk away with a gallon of filtered water. If you're a water purist, but hate paying 69 cents to $1 or more for bottled water, you might consider joining the growing number of Philadelphians who are getting their H2O from a machine. It works like this: You bring your container to the vending machine, often set up near the door of a supermarket.

For a moment, just a year, maybe two ago, it seemed that a tipping point had been reached: Bottled water wasn't cool anymore; it was uncool. The plastic bottles had taken on the aspect of handheld SUVs - oil hogs to manufacture, to haul (from Fiji, for Pete's sake!), to get rid of. They weren't vessels of glacial purity; they were agents of glaciers' demise. More than that, the soda companies - Coke and Pepsi, who'd seen soft-drink sales soften - had implicitly demonized perfectly safe public tap water that they were then shamed into admitting (in city after city, including Philadelphia)

Most people choose bottled spring water for its purity and taste. But that clear plastic container with the cool, bubbly scenes on the front can have a little-known downside inside: no fluoride, the chemical credited with causing a dramatic drop in cavities in the United States over the last half-century, especially among children. Who knew? As sales of nonfluoridated bottled water continue to climb, more dentists are urging parents and patients to seek out the few brands that have added fluoride.

Health officials in Montgomery County are warning owners of private wells to drink boiled or bottled water until they can be certain wells are free of bacteria that may have washed in from floodwaters. The county sent out an alert Monday from its Norristown office aimed at those among the 35,000 owners whose wells are in low-lying areas or next to flooded waterways. "Due to the recent heavy rains from Hurricane Irene, wells inundated by floodwater may be contaminated and should not be used until tested," the alert read.

Not because of its clean, fresh taste; the well water at their Lower Salford home is just fine in that department. The family gave up their own water in late September, however, on the advice of the Environmental Protection Agency, which found in July that the Kenyons' well and 41 others in the area were contaminated with boron, a trace element commonly found in laundry detergent. Boron doesn't cause cancer, the EPA says, but has caused "severe testicular atrophy and spermatic cessations" in dogs given a high dosage.

Washington Township's newest gourmet-type supermarket opened its doors about three months ago on Hurffville-Cross Keys Road expecting to sell a lot of fancy cheeses and gourmet food. But the hottest seller of late has not been shrimp or kosher food, according to an official of the Shop 'n Bag. It's been bottled water. Since news that a Washington Township well was contaminated with radium was made public two weeks ago, bottled water sales have at least doubled, said Bob Weikel, the store's grocery manager.

TOKYO - Nearly two weeks of rolling blackouts, distribution problems and contamination fears prompted by a leaking, tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have left shelves stripped bare of some basic necessities in stores across Tokyo. Some people are even turning to the city's ubiquitous vending machines to find increasingly scarce bottles of water. At the source of the anxiety - the overheated, radiation-leaking nuclear plant - there was yet another setback yesterday as two workers were injured when they stepped into radiation-contaminated water.

TOKYO - Nearly two weeks of rolling blackouts, distribution problems, and contamination fears prompted by a leaking, tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have left shelves stripped bare of some basic necessities in stores across Tokyo. Some people are even turning to the city's ubiquitous vending machines to find increasingly scarce bottles of water. At the source of the anxiety - the overheated, radiation-leaking nuclear plant - there was yet another setback Thursday as two workers were injured when they stepped into radiation-contaminated water.

Bottled water, once an icon of a healthy lifestyle, has become a pariah, the environmentally incorrect humvee of beverages. In recent months, dissent over the once innocuous bottle of Aquafina or Dasani has grown from a trickle to a tsunami. Not just among enviros who decry the 1.5 million barrels of oil used to make a year's worth of bottles. (Plus more to transport it from, in the case of Tasmanian Rain, the end of the Earth.) Not just among pragmatists who cringe at the absurdity of paying $1.50 for bottled when tap is all but free - a fraction of a cent per gallon in Philadelphia.

Wood-fired oven by wood-fired oven, the city's pizza scene is heating up. When American-raised Antimo DiMeo, 20, expressed interest in following his Neapolitan-born father, Pino, 43, in the pizza business, the son insisted he wanted to cook in the old-country way, with a wood-fired oven. (Pino's parlors use conventional gas ovens.) Then the father and son said they performed a taste test at their parlor in downtown Wilmington: They made batches of dough with Wilmington tap water and with bottled water from Naples.

Health officials in Montgomery County are warning owners of private wells to drink boiled or bottled water until they can be certain wells are free of bacteria that may have washed in from floodwaters. The county sent out an alert Monday from its Norristown office aimed at those among the 35,000 owners whose wells are in low-lying areas or next to flooded waterways. "Due to the recent heavy rains from Hurricane Irene, wells inundated by floodwater may be contaminated and should not be used until tested," the alert read.

THINGS TO KNOW if you're down the shore. 1. First and foremost, if you're on a barrier island in Cape May or Atlantic County you have to leave immediately. Officials there ordered a mandatory evacuation and New Jersey State Police said you are indeed breaking the law if you disobey it. Don't forget your pets. 2. If you can't get out, put away anything that could blow or float away, try to get flashlights, batteries, a radio and at the very least, bottled water. 3. If you have coolers and have ice, you might be able to salvage food, water, medicine or anything else you need cold in your house.

A 33-year-old Philadelphia man pleaded guilty Friday to a federal indictment charging him with bribing military officials in exchange for government contracts related to combat operations in Iraq, prosecutors said. Justin W. Lee, the former president of Lee Dynamics International, provided military contracting officials with cash, airline tickets, meals, hotel stays, spa visits, and jobs. The total value of the bribes was more than $1.2 million. In return, his company won contracts worth millions, including deals for the storage of weapons in Iraq as well as for bottled water.

Michael and Judith Cabry were known as a friendly older couple in their Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood. If there was a hint of trouble in their household, in the 9500 block of Northeast Avenue, it was not widely known. About 10:20 a.m. Wednesday, a 16-year-old grandson paid a visit and discovered both of them dead from gunshots to the head. Police found a gun at the scene and said it appeared to be a murder-suicide, with Michael Cabry, 74, having shot his wife, 71, and then himself.

LOS ANGELES - A retired Army major has pleaded guilty to accepting $250,000 in bribes for contracts to supply bottled water to American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of Justice says Derrick Shoemake, 49, entered pleas to two bribery counts yesterday. While Shoemake served at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait in 2005 and 2006, he was in charge of delivering bottled water to troops. Two government contractors paid him to award them bottled-water contracts. The Justice Department says some of the money was delivered to his wife in Moreno Valley, Calif.

China toxic spill shuts city's water SHANGHAI, China - A toxic chemical spilled into a river that supplies drinking water to the scenic city of Hangzhou in eastern China, knocking out supplies to more than half a million people and creating a run on bottled water. A tanker truck carrying 20 tons of carbolic acid overturned late Saturday. The chemical, also known as phenol, was washed by rain into the Xin'an River 90 miles southwest of Hangzhou, the city said on its website. The city said an emergency worker died, but it did not say how. It said authorities temporarily shut down water plants and released extra water from nearby dams to dilute the spill, which affected the water supplies of 552,000 people in Hangzhou's suburbs.

Many shareholders never bother to attend an annual shareholders meeting, and usually they're not missing much. There are few fireworks. The little interaction that occurs between management and the audience is strictly managed, and often the meeting is over in a matter of minutes. This will be the second year in which companies can opt to hold a virtual annual shareholders meeting rather than the more familiar terrestrial one. But the live webcast version isn't exactly supplanting the traditional event held in hotel conference rooms everywhere.

TOKYO - Nearly two weeks of rolling blackouts, distribution problems and contamination fears prompted by a leaking, tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have left shelves stripped bare of some basic necessities in stores across Tokyo. Some people are even turning to the city's ubiquitous vending machines to find increasingly scarce bottles of water. At the source of the anxiety - the overheated, radiation-leaking nuclear plant - there was yet another setback yesterday as two workers were injured when they stepped into radiation-contaminated water.

TOKYO - Nearly two weeks of rolling blackouts, distribution problems, and contamination fears prompted by a leaking, tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have left shelves stripped bare of some basic necessities in stores across Tokyo. Some people are even turning to the city's ubiquitous vending machines to find increasingly scarce bottles of water. At the source of the anxiety - the overheated, radiation-leaking nuclear plant - there was yet another setback Thursday as two workers were injured when they stepped into radiation-contaminated water.