I just read this whole thread, and it's all very silly. You've laundered "I don't like the water" into "it is not recommended that you drink the water" which are really different things. The latter implies that there is a consensus understanding about this, the way there is for, say, Guatemala. 200+ million Americans drink their tap water, and most visitors do too. There are many parts of the US where water could be improved, especially in lower-density places and especially for recently-discovered contaminants, but the idea that travelers need to be careful about it as a matter of safety just isn't true. Flint is a huge news story precisely because it is so aberrant in a country with otherwise good water.
If I travel to Europe, how do I know if the local knows the water is safe to drink?
Unless you're in Flint, or a paranoiac, tap water in the US is safe. Period.
Flint's problem is not endemic, it was isolated. The article is really reaching - they cite 3 instances over ~15 years of problems in city water supplies. In 2 of the 3 cases it was caught and rectified quickly - Flint is the exception.
No; the people in Flint would entirely agree that they expected to be able to drink their water - that's why it was such an outrage that they couldn't.
On the other hand, the fact Puri, in Odisha, got safe drinking water from the tap was a major news story last year - since it was the first city in India to have that, and even just general availability of piped water at all is uncertain for many in India - many, many people get water delivered by road on tankers.
Maybe 60 million Americans avoid tap water because they have reasons not to trust their own water, especially post-Flint. [1]
Some quick Googling turns these pages up:
- Consumer Reports founds PFAS in 117 of the 120 water samples they tested from across the US [2]
- When [chlorine] mixes with other organic compounds it can create a few harmful byproducts, including trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids [3]
- Lead poisoning is apparently also a problem in Detroit, Pittsburgh, DC [4]
- Arsenic has seeped into the water supply in California, Arizona, and New Mexico [4]
I honestly don't know if any of these are incorrect misinformation or if people are acting in a misguided fashion, but as far as I can see, there certainly doesn't seem to be a consensus on that being the case.
How is that not correct? I don't recommend you drink tap water anywhere in Africa, China and India. People over there would envy water quality in the US.
The vast majority of water in the US is safe to drink straight from the tap. Each local government has different quality standards but all are supposed to meet the federal guidance as a bare minimum. Depending on their source of water too they may add different minerals or chemicals to treat the water. Yes, the U.S. has had stupidity like Flint, but I'd call that an exception to what is otherwise quite a safe system as a whole.
Is R/O better? Depends on your definition of better, but R/O is obviously very clean and safe to drink, although I have heard some people say they don't like the taste or "how" it feels. R/O removes a lot of the minerals so it does taste different for sure. Some people can't stand their water to be hard and some don't like soft water, so I think that is preference for many people.
As do some places in the U.S. and many people do fear that their water while technically potable, is full of unhealthy materials like lead. Even for me in a relatively new building, I have no idea about the materials of the lines built into it or the water main in my city. I use a Brita or straight from the tap personally but I can't say I blame people who are concerned (in the U.S.) where infrastructure is quite old and there doesn't seem to be much concern by officials even in the most dire of cases like Flint to fix things.
In some places the water tastes really horrible. It's of course safe to drink, but it tastes horrible. I don't think this is a good argument (I know it's not yours).
I would not drink American tap water. It always smells like chlorine and from what I googled apparently up to 4 milligrams per liter are regularly allowed in the US. This is definitely not a thing in western Europe. We don't need to talk about the things that you cannot taste or smell and what happened in Flint.
The parent is wrong. Yes, contact government officials if you suspect the drinking water is dangerous.
I think you also are being flippant when you suggest a nation is not developed because there are isolated regions with faulty infrastructure. Flint is a tragedy, but most of the country has waterworks that pay close attention to the health of their product.
I'm not quite following; are you saying it's not recommended that you drink American tap water? Or that there are bunch of other countries with sketchier water full of drinking fountains?
I imagine people assume this because similar news reports haven't come out about bottled water, and because common advice when traveling to other countries with unsafe tap water is "use bottled water".
How does this compare to the EU? It's one thing for tap water to not be perfect, it's quite another for it to be as bad as Flint, MI. What's the true distribution here?
Making people unreasonably afraid of tap water just seems irresponsible.
There’s a big gap between safe and palatable. Anyone who says just drink from the tap has never lived somewhere where the water source is very hard groundwater.
You can't taste many industrial chemicals or even biological contaminants. Tap water can taste great and be unsafe. And taste horrible due to minerals and be perfectly safe. You really need to see regular reports on water tests to understand if the local infrastructure provides safe drinking water.
The parent comment was of course sarcastic. However, your trip savvy list is seven countries long.
The US does not have the best tap water in the world, I think everyone here can guess that already. It does have extremely safe tap water overall however, save for a few examples like Flint (and fracking regions in West Texas or Oklahoma, both of which get bad ratings on water violations). Its rate of serious drinking water violations is low nationally going back over the last 20-30 years.
How can one know if the water is reasonable in the US? We certainly cannot trust the local governments tasked with this job. Recent events in Flint and hundreds of other places in the US show that, if you can afford it, bottled water is at least safe compared to the local tap water (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/19/erin-brocko...). I guess it's either that or get out the science kits every day and test your own water. Which I'm sure takes a lot more time and money than buying bottled. Basically, drinking tap water in the US is a huge gamble and it's not worth it. You don't have to leave the country to get third world water. It's everywhere here. Then again, much of the US is third world if you judge by such criteria as clean water and healthcare access.
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