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€“] [email protected] 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€“] [email protected] 6 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€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I'm from ๐Ÿ‡ต๐Ÿ‡ญ, particularly Davao City (southern part of the country).

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy isn't blocked in Hong Kong? Oh I guess its much more difficult since they'll have to block all lemmy instances.

Anyways, here in the United States of America, tap water is safe to drink, except in certain places like Flint, Michigan, but thats more of a lead pipe issue than a germ issue. I regularly drink water directly out of the tap, I don't have any health issues that result from drinking water.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Yep, in the Netherlands we drink tap water all the time. No reason to boil it, except for tea of coffee of course.

[โ€“] [email protected] 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Austria here, I drink tap water without boiling all the time without thinking twice about it. Pretty much in the entire EU I feel safe doing so.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 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€“] [email protected] 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€“] [email protected] 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€“] [email protected] 6 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€“] [email protected] 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 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€“] [email protected] 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€“] [email protected] 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€“] [email protected] 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€“] [email protected] 5 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€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 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€“] [email protected] 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€“] [email protected] 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Canadian here, drinking water right of the tap.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

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[โ€“] [email protected] 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 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€“] [email protected] 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€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I live in the great lakes region of Canada and our tap water is totally safe

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[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Norway = Yes. But the fresh water pipes are in the same trench as the sewer pipes, and being 100 years old, the clean water depends on the pressure. This is in Oslo btw..

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Canada here - tap water is just fine, I filter it at home since I prefer the taste but I've never been adverse to drinking it straight

[โ€“] [email protected] 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.

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