Asklemmy

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

Australia here, yes most people drink it without boiling but it depends a little what region you’re in. Some bits of the fat north or some island towns, you may be better off boiling it. Lots of people in the city use built in filter taps but I kind of write that off as con job.

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

Switzerland here,

Yes we absolutely drink tap water here, not only it is well regulated but it may also beat many bottled water in terms of taste..

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

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

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.

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.

In Rome there are literally fountain running constantly in the middle of almost all the streets(old area specially ) of potable whater. Again non stop, people use them allot

Not at all...where I live tap water isn't clean at all. It comes in a white colour with pression. And mining industry contaminated a lot

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?

Yes. It's a bit of a scandal when that's not true. (Canada here)

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.

Boiling it has to be "force of habit", then. I wonder how long it's been potable. I'm guessing mainland China is mostly boil-first.

Belgium: yes! We drink tap water. Straight from the tap. Hardness varies from city to city. At my home I have a filter to make the water softer. That helps the taste but also keeps all faucets etc running.

Australian here, I grew up drinking tap water without boiling it but since I married my wife who is Chinese, I must drink it after it was boiled. It's good for the healthy.

I’m located in the US and like others have said it’s safe to drink the tap water, but me personally, I run my water through a filter first.

I’ve never boiled tap. It’s safe where I live. I do have a reverse osmosis filter though. But only for taste, and to remove hardness to protect my glassware.

I do. When I was a child, I was even confused about why people don't drink tap water but buy them instead from shops or why they boil or someway disinfect them.

Here in El Salvador, you can drink tap water safely depending the region you are.

I live in the Netherlands and we drink tap water without boiling.

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.

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

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.

In England we drink straight from the tap. I live in London which has incredibly hard water so it's not the nicest tasting and it will leave white residue on the glass but it's not bad for you.

Semi-rural American here. Our water comes from a well and is safe to drink. However, it is hard water and we often prefer to either use a purifier or buy purified water for drinking directly.

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.

In Canada I don't boil it.

In Vietnam, I do. Although more because I'm always making tea than anything else. Unless it's well water, in which case that's only for doing dishes, I won't drink that.

I did nearly die from cholera some years back, but it was probably not from the tap water specifically. Sanitation and food safety has really improved here in the last decade, I'm happy to say.

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.

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

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

I live in the USA, and we don't have to boil tap water in my city, but after having lived for a spell in a place where tap water is boiled first, I boil mine because I like the way it tastes--it's sweeter. Maybe boiling it helps get rid of the chlorine taste that city water has? I don't know. But I do prefer it.

Philadelphia, PA, USA. We don't boil it, but I have a filter on the tap. The drinking water here is safe, but it smells funny, and my family filtered the water even back when we lived somewhere with better tasting water.

I have been to Iceland recently and tap water is absolutely fine to drink directly and preferred. No one there buys water. Just make sure you drink the cold water and not the hot one as the hot is from natural thermal springs so may contain some minerals I belive. Just carry your own bottles and you can fill up the cold water from anywhere, even restaurants will refill free.

In Sweden, yes tap water is safe without boiling. Might want to filter for taste reasons.

I would drink the water in Iceland without boiling it, probably without a second thought. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it tastes amazing.

Here in the UK we just drink straight from the (cold water only by law due to differring regulations) tap without boiling and that's been the case for decades at the least across the entire nation. There's just no need to boil the water here unless you are cooking.

It's also safe in Iceland, I went there and their water is crystal clear and pure since it's sraight from the glaciers. You could drink out of a random stream there.