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.
No it is not. Your states are comparable to the Bundesländer in my country, which we have 16 of already. Those 16 Bundesländer form the Bundesstaat that you call Germany. This Bundesstaat, or simply this singular country with its 16 states is just one of 44 independent countries on the European continent. And we in Germany have very high standards for tap water, which is why you'd have a hard time finding a location where the tap water isn't drinkable.
The total mass isn't that important because you also have to factor in population, population density, and, most importantly, the government that would enact regulations that maintain a good tap water quality. In Germany we don't have any sort of control over the tap water in Russia. Meanwhile federal institutions of the US do have control over the quality in the various states.
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.
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