Unlike most of the bottled water sold in British petrol stations and supermarkets Dasani hadn't come from alpine glaciers or trickled out of a precious natural spring - it had come out of the local tap. True, the company put it through a purification process and added mineral salts, but the source was still tap water.

Something had gone wrong at the Dasani factory and a bad batch of minerals had contaminated the water production with a potentially carcinogenic bromate. Coke admitted defeat. Immediately they withdrew all 500,000 bottles of Dasani in circulation.

Something had gone wrong at the Dasani factory and a bad batch of minerals had contaminated the water production with a potentially carcinogenic bromate.

Coca-Cola was banned from import in India in 1970 as a result of the corporation's refusal to release the list of its ingredients. In 1993, the ban was lifted in pursuance of India's Liberalization policy. Soon after the relaunch, a study led by the Center for Science and the Environment (CSE), an independent scientific laboratory in New Delhi, found that Coca-Cola (along with competitor Pepsi) contained residues of dangerous pesticides at levels some thirty times the prescribed Indian and European norms. There were instances of substandard bottling practices by the company; the notorious discovery of a dead lizard inside a sealed Coca-Cola bottle was widely publicized. Environmental degradation in the form of depletion of the local ground water table due to the utilization of natural water resources by the company posed a serious threat to many communities. Finally, there were suspicions surrounding the addictive nature of the drink. As the company refused to disclose the exact ingredients, this remains a matter of speculation. In response to these allegedly unethical practices, several non-governmental organizations launched anti-Coca-Cola campaigns in India.

Coca-Cola bottler Panamco has been criticized for its relationship with unions. In Colombia, it has been alleged that the bottling company hired paramilitary mercenaries to assassinate union leaders. In January 2004, the New York City Fact-Finding Delegation on Coca-Cola in Colombia [1] [2] confirmed the workers' allegations. They found:

To date, there have been a total of 179 major human rights violations of Coca-Cola's workers, including nine murders. Family members of union activists have been abducted and tortured. Union members have been fired for attending union meetings. The company has pressured workers to resign their union membership and contractual rights, and fired workers who refused to do so. Most troubling to the delegation were the persistent allegations that paramilitary violence against workers was done with the knowledge of and likely under the direction of company managers. The physical access that paramilitaries have had to Coca-Cola bottling plants is impossible without company knowledge and/or tacit approval....

United States
Dasani is local tap water that has been purified by reverse osmosis, with selected minerals added to modify its taste.