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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by nigelinux@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

For context, I live in Hong Kong where most people drink tap water after boiling first. Some may install water filter but may still boil the water. Very few drink bottle water unless they're outside and too lazy to bring their own bottles.

Now, I'm researching whether I can drink tap water in Iceland (I'm going there in August), and while it looks like the answer is affirmative, almost no web article mention whether I need to boil the water first. People in Japan (a country I've visited a few times) also seems to be used to drink tap water directly without boiling.

The further I searched, the more it seems to me that in developed countries (like US, Canada and the above examples), tap water is safe to drink directly. Is that true? Do you drink tap water without boiling?

It sounds like a stupid question but I just can't believe what I saw. I think I experienced a cultural shock.

Edit: wow, thanks so much for the responses and sorry if I didnt reply to each one of you but I'll upvote as much as as I can. Never thought so many would reply and Lemmy is a really great community.

2nd Edit: So in conclusion, people from everywhere basically just drink water straight out of tap. And to my surprise, I checked the Water Supplies Department website and notice it asserts that tap water in Hong Kong is potable, like many well-developed countries and regions.

However, as the majority of Hong Kong people are living in high-rise buildings, a small amount of residual chlorine is maintained in the water to keep it free from bacterial infection during its journey in the distribution system. Therefore it is recommended to boil the water so that chlorine dissipates.

So, in short, I actually do not need to boil the water unless I hate chlorine smell and taste. But I guess I'll just continue this old habit/tradition as there's no harm in doing so.

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[-] DominicHillsun@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

In Lithuania we do not need to boil tap water to drink it and usually it tastes nice unless your plumbing is fucked

[-] Fabrik872@apollo.town 7 points 1 year ago

Europe, slovakia tap water is drinkable but the taste differs from city to city i think usualy vilages and tiny towns have better tasting water

[-] Frodo@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

I'm in Canada and we drink from the tap.

[-] nx5qly@pawb.social 6 points 1 year ago

I'm from 🇵🇭, particularly Davao City (southern part of the country).

Tap water is drinkable here although there are water bottles available.

[-] DigitalBits@lemmy.fmhy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

In NZ, the only time I've boiled water is when we had an earthquake that screwed up a bunch of stuff, including the water & sewage pipes.

[-] probably_a_robot@lemmy.one 6 points 1 year ago

Illinois, US. tap water has always been safe to drink wherever I've lived in this state. I've only been under a boil order a couple times in my life. That being said, I do filter my tap water otherwise it tastes strange to me

[-] TheHerno@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

Argentinian here, depends on the region of the country, in most places it's safe to drink tap water although it usually has too much chlorine or in small rural cities like mine sometimes there's a bacteria leak on the water so we prefer to buy bottled water

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[-] Lemminary@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hell to do the no. The heavy metals alone would either kill me from anemia or make me go insane. It's bottled water for us in Mexico, unfortunately. :/ Those saying you can safely drink water from the tap in certain countries.. are you sure? Have you measured it yourself? Even some of the bottled water I ran some tests on back in the day were iffy.

[-] average650@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Our water is tested yearly and the reports provided to us with the specific locations reports. There's a handful throughout our town.

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[-] Antik@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Northern California, United States.

I filter my tap water mostly for taste, but it's completely safe to drink without boiling. I would even argue that it's beneficial to drink because of the fluoride (I'm not an anti-fluoride/anti-science nutjob).

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[-] rimorso@feddit.it 6 points 1 year ago

I've lived in Milan (Italy) London (UK) and Rethymno (Greece) tap water is safe to drink in all of them, extremely good in Milan just straight up, good in London but with a lot of limescale so we filtered it for taste reasons, and the same as London in Rethymno.

[-] hugz@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Australia- Safe to drink. The water is chlorinated and fluoridated (for dental health).

I'm not 100% sure if the water is fluoridated across the whole country or just in my state

[-] parsifal@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

I live in America (Minnesota), and tap water has always been safe to drink in my lifetime. There are other places in the US where it’s discovered that the tap water has been unsafe, but that’s generally seen as a huge scandal and a public health emergency, and culprits are tracked down.

It’s my impression that people nowadays drink a lot of filtered water, either through a water tap on their refrigerator that has built-in filtration, or through a pitcher with a built-in filter. I believe people mostly do this for flavor reasons, or out of an abundance of caution rather than any real, concrete concern over the safety of the tap water.

In Minneapolis, every spring there’s typically an algae bloom that makes the tap water taste like vegetation for a few weeks, and that’s gross, but I believe it’s safe. That’s the worst tap water experience I’ve had. When I was a kid, I remember being told that the tap water up at the family cabin was so hard (rich with minerals) that it could make someone constipated, but that sounds like nonsense to me now.

Interestingly, there are places in the US where there’s more lithium in the water than in other places, and studies have been done that show that people in those areas are a little happier (less incidence of self harm, crime, etc.)! So sometimes, the tap water is even beneficial 😜

[-] chepox@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 year ago

México. NO. Do not drink the tap water. Boiling does not help. It has a bunch of heavy metals and other contaminants in it. It sucks because mechanical filtering is incapable of removing them effectively. Reverse osmosis does but it is a challenging and expensive process to properly keep in your house. We always buy bottled water. Trucks deliver twice a week.

[-] god@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Some Spanish cities: In Madrid, people drink tap water without boiling. Some leave it to rest so the slight chlorine smell leaves the water. In Barcelona and Valencia, being coastal cities with desalinators, their water is too "heavy" (has too high a density of minerals), which makes it unhealthy to consume on a regular basis, and boiling it does nothing, so people buy a lot of bottled water.

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[-] Hotchillipotato@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 year ago

The thing about living in an undeveloped countries is that you don't have to worry about that sort of thing.. I'm pretty fucking sure a billion things will get me before contaminates water does.

[-] Lected@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

Finnish here and the tap water here is one of the cleanest in the world, so yeah, I drink straight from the tap.

[-] chrizbie@lemmy.nz 5 points 1 year ago

New Zealand, we drink it from the tap although some claim to dislike it depending on which part of the country your in, personally I think they're a bit too fussy

[-] Phantom_Engineer@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

US. The tap water is safe to drink. Occasionally a metro area will have problems and issue a boil order, telling people to boil tap water before drinking, but this is rare. Some areas have problems with lead contamination due to aging infrastructure, but this too is uncommon in the modern day.

[-] theroz@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Most first world countries will issue boil warnings when there may be a necessary reason. Ie) water main work or other contamination.

Iceland should be fine. In fact, I think they have some of the cleanest water around.

[-] Walop@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

Finland has all around signs for foreigners that the tap water is not only drinkable, but very high quality. https://yle.fi/a/3-10303369

But for some unfathomable reason, maybe to push more expensive drinks, many restaurants charge for tap water. Except they do not tell it in advance, you just get surprised by it on the bill and swear never to go that place again.

[-] skiba@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

In the United States, it is a little bit different.

There are "standards" that water quality has to live up to. Do these standards actually meet the criteria for safe drinkable tap water? Not always. This is evident in places like Flint, Michigan and other poorer urban areas.

Some of the tap water can be so bad that people wouldn't dare to drink it even after boiling.

In some areas, the tap water quality is wonderful.

Here is a relatively decent source about the topic as it pertains to the USA. https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/best-tap-water-in-the-us/#:~:text=The%20ten%20states%20with%20the,%2C%20South%20Dakota%2C%20and%20Nevada.

The long story short here, is certain places like Hawaii have extremely clean tap. Other places, like Texas, are notorious for having numerous water quality violations.

It falls down to each individual State and City for maintaining the standards that were set. In my opinion, it it just an easy way for them to waive liability at the end of the day.

X.

[-] Yaardman876@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Here is Jamaica it is safe to drink the tap water without boiling.

[-] JASN_DE@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

German here. Yes, constantly. The only reason to not do it would be taste (personal preference) or sometimes due to pollutants entering the system, which is explicitly communicated by the city.

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[-] jacktherippah@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I live in Vietnam and tap water is always boiled before drinking. Our tap water sucks.

[-] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Water? Like from the toilet? :O

(j/k)

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[-] Kraltar@lemmy.fmhy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Argentina, drinking filtered tap water rn (not boiled). It's said to be safe but quality may vary throughout the country. Although it's not recommend for small childrens

[-] Atarian@vlemmy.net 4 points 1 year ago

Australia here - we drink water straight from the tap, but I picked up the habit of drinking boiled water from my frequent trips to Shanghai.

[-] theUnlikely@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

I recommend you stop that immediately. I lived in Shanghai for a few years and the problem isn't microbial presence in the water, it's the poorly maintained pipes that may leach metals into the water on its way to your home. Boiling of course does nothing to lessen this. The only option is to use bottled water or a really good filter system.

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[-] Snek@feddit.ch 4 points 1 year ago

In switzerland, we can drink the tap water without boiling it first.

[-] Mir@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes of course it's safe. I drink filtered water from our fridge, but tap is perfectly fine too. I'm from Europe btw.

[-] MarshallMed@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 year ago

In Brazil we usually haver ceramic filters attached to our faucets, so we drink water from there.

[-] fugepe@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

you forgot the part where you add an unsafe deathly electrical wire to it to get warm water, lmao.

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[-] fosiacat@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

nyc us here, only boil water if there is a warning due to a pipe break or something.

[-] Buba@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

I live in Bavaria, Germany, and I've been drinking tap water here for over 30 years without boiling.

But I live in a rural area. I once had a job in the industrial area of a semi-sized city and the tap water there was sketchy.

Depends, I guess.

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[-] salimundo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

US it depends on where you live. I grew up and live now in upstate NY and the tap water is great. In between I lived in Arizona and the water was terrible. I have at different times a water cooler or an undersink reverse osmosis. The water wouldn't make you sick though so you can drink it if needed, it was just very hard and tasted bad.

[-] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Reverse osmosis was the right call.

The thing about possible problems with municipal water in the US is that boiling would make the water worse. Boiling kills bacteria, but for things like PFAS contamination all boiling would do is steam off water and increase the concentration of contamination in what’s left.

I’m somewhat paranoid about PFAS contamination since it is tasteless and more of a long term problem rather than something that makes people acutely sick. There are entire counties where I refuse to drink or eat anything prepared within them because of their histories with industrial contamination entering the water supply, which is usually revealed to the public long after the fact.

[-] Gerula@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Straight and fresh from the pipes! Writing from Transilvania, Romania.

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this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
405 points (97.9% liked)

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