this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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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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[โ€“] 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

[โ€“] variouslegumes@reddthat.com 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

No boiling, but I bought a filter after listening to a story about PFAS.

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[โ€“] Lemminary@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

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[โ€“] Frodo@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] ARNiM@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In Indonesia, the tap water is not drinkable. Some gets their water from a nation-owned Drinking Water Company (PAM; Perusahaan Air Minum).

The situation is similar, they contain plenty of Chlorine to prevent bacteria from growing. But the distribution system might not be the cleanest. So usually people buy gallons of mineral water and put them into a dispenser.

Some others, takes their tap water from groundwater, pump it into a water tank, and use them. It is not drinkable either.

At home I use Reverse Osmosis dispenser from the groundwater, and it goes through a reminalisation process after the filtration process. Iโ€™ve been drinking with this setup for over 15 years now.

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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.

[โ€“] TheHerno@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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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[โ€“] milo@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Dublin, Ireland here. Always drank water straight from the tap. Unless there is some kind of issue with the water system in your area, then a notice will be put out to tell people to boil water before drinking.

[โ€“] Wrrzag@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Spainiard here. You can drink tap water everywhere (that's connected to the drinking water network, obviously), but there are better tasting waters than others. Madrid's water is bad, Barcelona's is atrocious (I don't know anyone living there that doesn't buy bottled water, it even gives weird flavours when cooking), but other places are nicer. My town's water is awesome, I just fill up bottles from the tap and put them in the fridge for easy cold water and laugh at the camacus.

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[โ€“] closure1170@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

Eastern US here. Definitely can drink without boiling. I do filter it, though. I'm more concerned about metals and particulates than pathogens.

[โ€“] amoroso@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

I live in a major Italian city, I'm well over fifty, and I've always drunk unfiltered water straight from the tap without boiling. Some Italians apparently don't like the taste of tap water but it's still safe to drink it unfiltered and unboiled in nearly all the country.

[โ€“] 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.

[โ€“] arefx@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

northern USA and we have some of the cleanest tap water in the country. Drink it all day from the tap you will never get sick from it, just tastes like nice water.

[โ€“] LongPigFlavor@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

I live in South Florida. The tap water in my area is safe. I drink it without boiling or filtering.

[โ€“] indigomirage@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Toronto tap water is actually very, very good. Tastes better than most bottled water I've tried. Very high standards here - we are extremely fortunate and I hope the high standards stay for a long, long time.

[โ€“] f5xs_bhw0a@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

In the Philippines, we don't drink from the tap. At all. It's quite dangerous and there have been a number of internet personalities that got stomach aches from drinking tap water ^cough^ ^haachama^ ^cough^

Instead, there are a lot of establishments here that sell drinkable water at a fraction of a dollar per 5 gallons.

[โ€“] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Water? Like from the toilet? :O

(j/k)

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[โ€“] 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

[โ€“] jacktherippah@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] Addfwyn@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am in Japan and have no issues with tap water here, used to drink it regularly.

I live closer to Mt. Fuji now and go get spring water from the mountain weekly instead. There's a basin at a shrine nearby that collects it and is free for people to take. No issues with the tap water, but this water tastes a lot better.

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[โ€“] 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.

[โ€“] teflocarbon@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Iโ€™m in Australia and have never boiled tap water before. Sometimes during major storms or flooding you get a boil water alert but these are usually advisory and monitoring shows that in most cases the water is still within legal limits. Of course though you should still boil the water if an alert does go out.

[โ€“] dewritoninja@pawb.social 5 points 1 year ago

I live in Ecuador. Tap water can be drunk without boiling on the capital and most other cities in the andes. In the Amazon and the pacific is better to boil it first. Guayaquil the second largest city has a reputation of having incredibly dangerous water

I grew up on well water and was used to drinking from the garden hose when working out in the yard; but thats southern US for ya.

Now days, jus fill a bottle from the tap and don't really put much thought to it.

[โ€“] pakiyimo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Spaniard here. I've been drinking unboiled tap water since I was a kid. It's perfectly safe to do that.

[โ€“] mp3@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Canadian here, drinking water right of the tap.

[โ€“] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Acc. to this site it's fine to drink cold water without boiling in Iceland. However don't drink the tap warm water - it's sulphurous.

But answering your question, in Brazil it varies from city to city. I drink tap water in my city just fine, without boiling or filtering; but I had to do both in another city ~400km from here.

[โ€“] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Murican here: I only boil if there's a boil alert, but I always run tap water through a carbon or ceramic filter even though tap water is supposed to be regulated and safe to drink. I think it just tastes better and I am a little mistrustful given disasters like Flint Michigan.

[โ€“] god@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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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[โ€“] 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.

[โ€“] Mir@lemmy.ml 5 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.

[โ€“] Yaardman876@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] L0Wigh@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

France : we drink tap water directly without any issue. People who drink bottled water is because they dislike the taste of tap water where they live.

[โ€“] pumpkin@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I live in Sweden. Yeah, the tap water is clean and can be drank straight from the tap without boiling, filtering, or treatment in the whole country.

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[โ€“] HorseFD@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Australia: We don't boil tap water here in Australia.

[โ€“] nickiam2@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Also in Australia, and I do boil when it's rain water or ask the locals first before drinking tap water. Bigger cities are fine but small remote towns can sometimes have untreated tap water.

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[โ€“] Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

We filter our tap water here in Korea. Most people do, but as I understand, it's safe to drink it just straight from the tap. It's just better through a machine that gets rid of any lingering chlorine and heats it or chills it for you.

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