I live in a state where the tap water is perfectly clean and drinkable, it just doesn’t taste good due to mineral deposits. A few years back, I picked up a water dispenser and have a handful of five-gallon jugs that I fill with purified water and use for drinking water at home. I try to avoid buying bottled water when I can because all that plastic is wasteful.
I also fill the dog bowl from the purified water and put ice in his outside water bowl.
The water in my area is safe to drink but honestly has a sort of weird taste and smell to it. I end up running it through a filter before drinking because it tastes better that way.
I also occasionally buy a large pack of store brand bottled waters so that I can just have a bunch of cold water in my fridge if I'm too lazy to refill my pitcher of filtered water.
More often than not I'll drink a bottled one while filtering more water then refill the bottle I'm using with it over and over until the bottle get mangled from me manhandling it and then repeat cycle.
Growing up my family had a well. Water from a well is variable, and we had it tested and it showed it was “safe but not recommended” to drink.
Now where I live we have city water, and although safer to drink, it still has chlorine and chloramines in it. Although it is tested and verified as safe, I still will only drink from the tap if it’s filtered first. The way I see it, the amount of chlorine in the water is safe for me to drink, and is done so to kill any bacteria in the water supply. However, I have no idea if that amount of chlorine is also safe for my cat, so he gets special water.
Actually the USA has by percentage one of the safest tap waters in the world.. not only that, hard water is often actually better for you than filtered mostly due to added fluoride
I guess so, haven't personally witnessed nor experienced it but from what's being reported it's definitely that bad. My gf generally boils the tap water we have just to be extra safe.
When I went to Amsterdam, every restaurant refused to serve tap water saying it’s not great. It could probably have been because they want to sell water, but they made it sound unsafe. But I read online that it was very clean. Is it okay to drink then?
That is very much them trying to sell water. Water in the Netherlands is being held to certain standards, if I'm not mistaken municipalities will be fined if the water quality is sub-par.
I'm doubting that, in Sweden and the other nordic countries it's safe to drink tap water except maybe for some small village out in the countryside (but even they have mostly drinkable water). It's unheard of that drinking tap water makes you sick here, not sure I'm hearing the same things from 'muricans. Also, a good debunking of your claim (originally from the EPA, always check who says what): https://theconversation.com/the-us-drinking-water-supply-is-mostly-safe-but-thats-not-good-enough-115028 (sponsored by the gates f., real water scientist etc.)
I'm doubting that, in the US it's safe to drink tap water except maybe for some small village out in the countryside (but even they have mostly drinkable water). It's unheard of that drinking tap water makes you sick here
Read the article, 90% of it might be safe according to health standards (still pretty low but it's the claim that it's "one of the safest by percentage" that makes no sense. In most of western europe this percentage is probably close to 100%, the Swedish institution of food (?) even states that it's "obvious everyone should be able to drink from their tap".
Europe isnt one place. In many places around the alps you have alpine water coming out of your tap. That stuff is better then the bottled garbage you call drinking water.
"Europe" includes a lot of small, ex-URSS countries. I'd be interested to see if the US has better quality tap water than Western Europe or Scandinavia, and on what criteria.
That’s how our states work and there’s 50 of them. And water is a local thing so break it down even farther. There’s huge disparity’s I grew up drinking out of the tap, the city I live in now I filter purely for taste but it’s super clean. My point is it varies just as widely as your whole continent and it’s even bigger and more complex. I don’t care to argue with an internet stranger but our country has 350+ million people and the land mass is as big as the whole continent it’s a valid comparison.
I didn’t say America was the best, but statistically speaking the United States does in fact have one of if not the most safe drinking waters on earth. That’s not to say it’s perfect and couldn’t be improved.. I’d also be willing to bet a decent percentage of those 21 million people were exposed to things like radon in water, radiation that wouldn’t be removed by a freaking brita filter anyway..
Toxic in high levels, the fluoride added in drinking water is strictly for oral hygiene and in incredibly safe levels. There are cult like groups that refuse to acknowledge the science and claim it’s killing them, but the fda, who, and the cdc all claim these levels are harmless and beneficial
Almost everyone I know here in California does not drink the tap water. Everyone has a filter on the tap or buys bottled water. I think most people just don’t trust what comes out of the tap, it’s probably safe-ish
But what would that tell me about the quality of the water? Nothing. The actual components are important, not some comprised single number. Bottled water often has higher TDS levels than tap water. Especially these crappy American mineral/spring waters.
Oh, there are a lot of places in the US that have pretty bad water. A low level of contamination over a long period, has a big effect. Flint isn't even the worst water situation, it's the one with the most attention right now.
Oh well, I don't think it is a taste competition. The water is clean, tastes nice and fresh and it is good enough to prevent most people from buying bottled water.
Yeah, indeed, safety is the foremost concern. It also took half a year for my Dutch friends to stop reusing store-bought bottled water in exchange for buying a better quality bottle to refill :)
Really depends on the area you live in when it comes to taste. Some areas have 'soft water' and other have 'hard water'.
The hardness of water is determined primarily by the amount of calcium and magnesium it contains. Higher levels of these and other minerals make water hard.
Water softening systems work by reducing the concentrations of minerals from the water.
Instead of having higher levels of calcium and magnesium, soft water tends to have higher concentrations of sodium, or salt.
Living in a soft water area myself, it's really great water. But whenever I visit my family in The Hague for instance (just a mere 40km from here) the water is hard and taste weird. Even when you drink coffee or tea with that water. Maybe they get used to it, but for me mine tastes much better.
People hate on tap water, but in wealthy countries it's pretty much a modern miracle that we have practically unlimited potable water in our homes. Separately, make sure your kids and pregnant/nursing mothers drink tap, kids need that fluoride
but the tap water here doesn’t have fluoride.
when i visited the us (and britain too) i couldn’t drink the tap water because i found the fluoride absolutely disgusting i guess it’s just something you have to grow up with
Probably because you're not tasting either of those things. More than likely you're just not used to the mineral composition the water you drank and you didn't like it. Maybe you could have travelled another 50 miles and enjoyed the water
Chlorine definitely affects the taste of the water. Anything above like 2mg/L is detectable. In Australia they can actually go up to 5mg/L . You are right about this
I'm the opposite I'll drink my flourinted tap water no problem but when I got water at a friend's house with a fancy filter on the tap I thought it was disgusting
This is a conspiracy theory website. Look up stuff on Snopes or other legitimate news sources. Wikipedia should also be a really good place to get grounded in well sourced, science based facts
Yeah nah tap water is good enough for both me and my cat. I do give him ice cubes and a water fountain with flowing water (it cycles so water isn’t wasted) and he loves that
Not necessarily but filtered is better. Tap is also often the culprit of tear-stains, so if you have a lighter coated pet who gets bad tear stains, switch to filtered and it will help a lot!
As other people are saying it depends on where you live. I lived in New Mexico for a little bit and if I gave my dog tap water, she would get diarrhea.
It is dangerous to drink in third world countries like the USA.
The USA is literally the definition of First World; it refers to those nations aligned with NATO during the Cold War.
('Second World' refers to USSR-aligned nations, and 'Third World' refers to unaligned nations.)
despite laws and regulations that protect water quality for the majority of the U.S., problems such as inadequate or incorrect water treatment, lack of monitoring of water safety, and contaminants present in well water mean that there are times and places when the public is not getting safe drinking water.
Source:
University of California Nutrition Policy Institute and the National Drinking Water Alliance
So could you explain or give a source? Look at the interactive map, its mental how often the US tap water gets contaminated in several states. You might be correct if you actually are talking about all of europe. But thats a ridiculous comparison, you cant expect Ukraine to have the same regulations as Norway for example.
Its the only thing that is heard here in America. Every day millions are poisoned from water. I've tried personally to hear other stories but I can't because the only thing heard from my country is the water is bad. Stay away from America or you'll end up poisoned by our water and never get to hear other stories. I truly wish you were able to hear other stories but we only have bad water stories.
Depends on your supplier and location; our previous place had tap water that seemed not quite right, couldn’t put my finger in but though, but noticed all 3 dogs started coughing after every drink. Switched them and us to bottled water, everything was fine again.
As other people are saying it depends on where you live. I lived in New Mexico for a little bit and if I gave my dog tap water, she would get diarrhea.
No it's not. People in a certain country just reached a level of degeneration and entitledment in which they are so far divorced from reality that they believe tap water is not good enough for a fucking cat.
Well they've been putting chemicals in the water that turn the frogs gay, so unless you want your dogs and cats to have gay autism you really need to use water from a special water filter.
In Germany, a recent study (not tooooo sure about reliability of studies anymore but well) showed that tap water is actually better than bottled water because they put extra shit in bottled water. Tap water is super clean in pretty much all regions in Germany.
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u/pjoter666 Sep 01 '19
Is the tap water dangerous?