WASHINGTON — Lots of people lunged for bottled water after they were told last month that tap water in many U.S. cities contains traces of pharmaceuticals. ‘They wanted five-gallon bottles, half-liter cases - anything that wasn’t municipal water,’ said Jennifer Brandon, who was taking phone orders for home-delivered Deer Park water the day the Associated Press story broke. Responding to the public alarm, Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Cal., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. called for a hearing on the federal response to drugs in drinking water, now set for Tuesday. Despite the sudden clamor, however, many water-quality researchers kept doing what they’d done for years about contaminants in tap water: nothing. They kept drinking local tap or well water, a half dozen of them told McClatchy. For one thing, they knew that bottled water is less regulated than municipal supplies are. The big reason, however, was that researchers were less anxious than senators and a public jolted by another new environmental scare for which risk and remedy are both unknown. Goodness knows, there are lots of reasons to worry about the safety of drinking water. Contaminants now commonly found in drinking water include tiny traces of […]