Asklemmy

Australian here, yes. Our tap water is pretty good

Have always drank tap water. No issue.

• New Jersey 🇺🇸
• Ontario 🇨🇦
• Tokyo 🇯🇵

After moving to the city I have to buy cannister water, because regular water is chlorated, not even ozonated, it tastes awful and not healthy.

I remember once after a long absence (1+ year) in my district, tap water literally felt sweet.

If its brown gulp it down, if its black send it back

I live in Seattle WA in usa. We have some of the cleanest water. This is because of the great fire of 1889. An entire district and most of the waterfront went up in flames. The reason is that the fire department had no water pressure because of all the demand from the attempt to put out the fire.

After that they got the cedar river shed. A huge amount of land that is owned by Seattle and kept pristine.

So yes you can drink the tap water in Seattle.

But I only drink la croix, lol

In this US, yes, we generally trust our tap water (although there have been notable incidents of water infrastructure failures, such as major lead contamination in Flint, MI), to the extent that if you get a drink in a restaurant here, 99% of the time it's going to be mixed or made using tap water, with ice made from tap water.

Some folks will use a filter (Brita brand filter pitchers used to be popular at one time, with TV ads and everything) but that's more for filtering out chemicals/toxins/minerals than anything else.

In rural places, every now and then the local government or water company (yes, a lot of places here have privatized water infrastructure which is not super great) will put out a 'Boil Water Notice' but this is generally considered outside of the norm, and you usually expect to see that kind of stuff resolve within a couple of days unless it's a result of a major disaster (we were under a Boil Water notice for 2 weeks after hurricane Katrina in my area, the longest stretch I ever remember). Boil Water notices are usually a result of either a breach of the infrascture (a pipe collapsing and the water supply getting dirty), or a water supply failing its regular quality/safety tests. Our water (can't speak for everywhere in the US, and don't really know the specifics of how they do it) is chemically treated and filtered before it goes into the tap, and the supply mechanisms are usually regularly tested to make sure they're within safe standards.

All of that being said, I know people who refuse to drink tap water, mostly because it tends to have a distinct taste from treatment and from having minerals in it, but also because they've heard horror stories like in Flint. Two things: those folks normally drink bottled water, which is usually just bottled-up tap water from some other place; and I usually see those folks gladly drinking fountain drinks/tea/etc at a restaurant, which is made with un-boiled tap water and served on tap-ice.

TL;DR - the tap water in the US is generally considered safe to drink, in most places, with notable exceptions, and for now (our mostly-privatized infrastructure is getting worse and worse, and very public failures have started to appear in not only water infrastructure, but everywhere)

NL here. Tap water here is a very well managed substance, and as a result, it's not only hella safe, but hella tasty as well.

When i lived in hongkong i never boiled the water, i just drank it from the tap

Believe it or not New York City has some of the best water in the state if not the country. I live outside of the city, and while I can drink from the tap, we prefer to use a filtered water pitcher, but we don’t boil first.

I'm in the US. I don't know too many people that drink directly from the tap. Almost everyone I know passes the water through a filter first.

Although, technically, I think the water is safe to drink. My city sends little informational cards saying how they've tested the water and it should be good to drink straight from the tap.

I think we in the US scare easy, so I'm guessing Big Water Bottle and Big Filter have brainwashed us into being scared to drink straight from the tap.

Is boiling the tap water just like superstition or what? or is it really not treated/cleaned by the local water authority to be fit for human consumption? Just curious what people think the benefit is, because in the US and Europe from what I know, we treat our public water so that it can, you know, be used by the public safely?

In the US you can typically drink from the tap but I would advise not, some areas are really bad to drink from the tap, but you should always have a filter at the very least. boiling isn't so necessary.

I once visted Austria (Innsbruck to be precise) and the water there was so incredible straight from the tap. It would be ice cold, so fresh and clean. I think they have the best water in the world there.