Asklemmy

certainly no harm in boiling, but yeah most places in the US I just drink right out the tap if it's public water. Some places are better than others, but usually a filter does the trick. Well water is a whole other story.

Here in italy we can drink tap water without boiling it first

German Here, we have really good Tapwater here.

no and no. The tap where I live taste nasy, i think its safe to drink but its not very good so I dont use it.

Canada - Many people here put water in the fridge or a britta jug to get rid of the chlorine taste

When I was in Cainta, Rizal, Philippines, my uncle always boils tap water before drinking. This is indeed a safety measure. He doesn't buy gallon bottles of drinking water.

I am from the Philippines, and in my city, there are districts that have unpotable water and they resort in using purified water for drinking and cooking. In my district though, water is very potable and we drank it until switching to purified water last year because our water provider got their system contaminated.

Modern treatment plants don't use chlorine anymore, they use cloramines that have little scent or taste. This is most likely the case in HK as well.

Boiling water that doesn't need to be boiled is a waste of energy and GHG.

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

US/Canada here as well as someone that has visited most of Europe (UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland) and stayed in hostels - no boiling necessary in any of these places.

There's actually a pervasive myth I've encountered that hot tap water is dangerous and that one should only drink cold water. As far as I'm aware, this myth is due to an old setup for water systems that many homes had before modern taps. The tap was separated into separate cold/hot faucets. The cold water came safely from the city, but the hot water came from tanks that were stored in people's attics and were therefore prone to rats and other creatures dying in them or bacteria building up. This is why still today, most British homes have separate hot/cold taps. I occasionally encountered such taps in the US and I assume that's why my dad raised me to make sure the water was cold before drinking it. My father's understanding of this was clearly outdated though. I learned all of this from a Tom Scott video.

Just ask someone from there on day one. They can obviously tell and i think this is the best strategy. I bet it's safe like in most parts of middle and northern europe.

In India generally people use a water purifier to filter tap water before consumption.

Have always drank tap water. No issue.

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

Here in Armenia all tap water is drinkable as is

Luxembourg here, i'll drink straight from the tap.

Im from Newfoundland Canada. The city I live in has a water treatment facility and the tap water is perfectly fine to drink without any filtering or boiling.

Many smaller towns in my province only have natural water sources (lakes/ponds/streams) or wells for their water supply. The town I grew up in was like that up till about 2005-2006ish. It was pretty rare for us to have to boil water though, maybe 3 weeks out of the whole year, a neighboring town with a different water supply had to boil their water for most of the year so there was alot of variability.

I live in the US, I use a reverse osmosis filter and then boil the water

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.

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

In USA yes, we drink tap water without boiling as long as we're in an area with safe tap water (most of the population) and not using our own untreated/untested well water. Every once in a while we get alerted to local unsafe tap water. We have a filter on the tap water but haven't always.

At home I exclusively drink tap water. I only boil it for tea sometimes :) I‘m from Germany.

Austria, yes, water is fine like that I would even drink it in the shower without issue. What is an issue is this habit once made for a bad time in Egypt where I didn‘t drink tap water (I was warned), but I mindlessly used it for brushing teeth and that probably ruined my last few days there.

US, Colorado - no need to filter or boil the tap water here. One of the benefits of living at the base of the mountains I suppose

Irish person here. Yes, I drink my tap water without boiling. My water comes from a well as I live in a rural area, but town/city water is drinkable too.

In Canada, tap water is perfectly fine to drink as is. There are some exceptions when it comes to more remote places, especially in some camping grounds, but they'll tell you or write it somewhere if that's the case.

I went to Iceland last year and the water's very clean and safe! There's no problem drinking it from the tap.

In Finland I drink straight out the shower head, it's fun and wonderfully safe.

This is crazy - for sure, in many countries it can be taken straight from the tap depending on the reliability of infrastructure... but to waste energy boiling it??? No thanks.

In England, I moved a few times - some places have great tasting water - others not so great - meaning it's always safe (and ok for brewing or cooking) but not so good for drinking from the tap.

In Scotland (a couple of places I stayed and worked) it's a toss up whether you should drink the tapwater, or go to your local and take another dram from the top row.. those Single Malt Whiskeys made with water from Scotland are amazing... but both are safe in moderation.

In Bangkok, if I don't clean my shower out monthly, it ends up with brown gunge building up, so I certainly don't drink the stuff... and it's hard to know how clean it is (though we're told it's certainly drinkable at source, it has a long way to come to my house - and the pressure of the system is low... another red flag). Visiting tropical islands, you see some resorts are connected via long plastic pipes which are often on the surface (in the sun) and so definitely not the best candidate for anything more than a shower.

In Bangkok too, unless you can test it yourself you shouldn't drink it - but I fail to see why you'd decide to boil dirty water and drink it, seeing as most countries with inadequate tap water have drinking water.

I wouldn't use 'boiled tap water' to make my pasta either.

I have six large bottles which gets topped up each week, to make sure I have plenty of water to cook and drink with... If I didn't, then I'd invest in a good water filtration system.

I think you've already had plenty of replies here, but yeah here in western Europe, straight from the tap. I'm also fortunate not to have any chlorine in my water. It's delicious.

One thing about the chlorine, it also just evaporates over time without boiling. Filling a jug of water and leaving it standing around for a while will also get rid of that chlorine smell/taste!