You can get it with fruit flavors, vitamins or tingly carbonation. You can choose from 3,000 brands around the world, all proclaiming their products are natural and healthy. You can get it anywhere — at the market, the gas station, the gym. A lot of people say it's not much different than what comes out of your faucet, but it sells because it's handy, cold, portable and kind of chic.

It's bottled water, and its ubiquity, crisp taste and relatively cheap price make it the most convenient way to avoid dehydration.

Some, like Carol Gray, who teaches mind-body wellness and yoga at Southern Oregon University, used it to break an addiction to sugary, caffeine-laced cola.

"I love the carbonated mineral water, the bubbly way it tastes. I hate to admit this but the bubbles make it fun and special," says Gray. "Along with tea, it helped me break the addiction to sugar, corn syrup, caffeine and all that junk that's in pop."

Like many bottled-water lovers, Gray also drinks water out of the tap at home, but she puts it through a carbon filter to remove germ-killing chlorine and other impurities.

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"I like it sparkling," says Nancy Willson of Ashland. "It's a mouth feel thing. I don't like the fruit flavoring. It can't have anything in it that's a health no-no."

Carbonated soda drinks are still number one in the hearts of Americans, but bottled water has clawed its way to the number two spot among beverages (ahead, even, of coffee and beer), with $10 billion in sales in 2004, or 85 big bottles per person. Sales are climbing 10 percent a year, says Mintel International, a market research firm.

Sales have skyrocketed at least partly because marketing by the bottled-water industry brands it as pristine stuff from mountain glaciers and springs. A National Resources Defense Council test of 103 brands, however, found contaminants — including synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria and arsenic — in a third of them, according to its Web site, www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/.

Bottled water, it said, "is not necessarily cleaner or safer than most tap water."

Guzzling a chilled bottle of something labeled "natural Alpine spring water" at the Ashland Food Co-op on a hot afternoon, Southern Oregon University physicist Panos Photinos says he bought it because he forgot his filtered water from home.

"Tap water tastes better, and I think it's better for you," he says. "This is probably from the tap.

"People have been selling tap water (as healthy water) going back into ancient Greece," adds Photinos, a native Grecian.

Bottled-water sales are also driven by fears of what's in tap water. Rogue Valley water may come from mountain streams only minutes away, but a study by the Environmental Working Group of tap water in 42 states found 119 chemicals regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, including disinfection byproducts, nitrates, chloroform, barium, arsenic and copper.

Many bottled-water drinkers, like Willson, "buy it with regret because it's in a plastic container," something widely viewed as adding harmful, non-natural substances into water. "To get it in glass, you have to pay twice as much."

Because of fear of contamination by plastic, Amber Dusk of Ashland says she refills glass screw-cap bottles with filtered water — and augments this with Trinity Springs Water from Idaho.

Raw food authority Sergei Boutenko of Ashland avoids plastic containers as well and "energizes" his bottled mineral water by making sun tea with it and adding wild mint he's gathered from the mountains, plus a hint of hibiscus and wild blueberries, sweetened with honey or agave.

"That sweetness makes you want to drink more of it, so you're sure to get all the water you need," he says.

A Japanese study on the Web site of the National Institutes of Health concludes most bottles used for mineral water contain polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, and that this "migrates" into water when the injection nozzle scrapes the inside of the bottle as it fills it with water.

The American Plastics Council, on its Web site, cites many studies saying PET is benign to the body, but other studies suggest hazards.

To be called "mineral water," the stuff must have at least 250 parts per million of dissolved minerals (mostly compounds of sodium, potassium and calcium), according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates bottled water.

"Spring water" must flow out of the ground and not come from a well. "Purified water" can come from anywhere, including taps. It's usually distilled to get rid of minerals and germs and can be treated with ozone, an antibacterial agent, says livescience.com.

The increasing welter of bottled water choices can be confusing, but many water aficionados say stay away from waters with additives other than natural fruit flavors. Such additives might include sweeteners, like corn syrup, electrolytes or even vitamins.

In fact, a new product known as "vitamin water" is hot with area teens who love pizza but are not so keen on vegetables. Boutenko calls that "silly," noting all needed vitamins can be gotten from eating a good meal, then drinking water for hydration.

Some waters, like Essentia, are bannering the presence of antioxidants and electrolytes registering a pH of 9.5 "to neutralize toxic acidic wastes." The electrolyte waters are essentially like drinking energy or sports drinks and do indeed provide minerals, says Ashland nutrition author Ross Pelton.

The debate continues — tap or bottled water? Unless you have a reverse osmosis filter (removes everything but the water) on your tap at home, says Pelton, go with bottled.

But he recommends glass bottles. On local shelves, these were European mineral and spring waters, such as Pellegrino and Gerolsteiner, with histories going back to the late 1800s, and Perrier, reportedly discovered by Hannibal in 218 B.C.

John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.