Can You Drink Water, Straight Out of Your Tap?

The tap water is wonderful where I live, yet there are still people who feel the need to buy bottled water. I think it is because we live in a part of the world where we have so few real things to worry about, we invent things to worry about. People in any other parts of the world would be happy to have such easy access to clean safe drinking water, yet we find reasons to believe it isn't good enough. Or rather, the people who market bottled water lead us to believe it isn't good enough.

Most areas of the USA have water that is safe to drink right out of the tap. Bottled water companies want you to think you need their water, but in reality it is just tap water from their facility. There are some remote areas where the water is not very good, although technically "safe." We lived in one such area for 5yrs and bought bottled water. We were thrilled to move to a city with good water. Each city should also release a water quality report at least annually.

We use a filter through the fridge. The tap water is tepid and tastes horrible. I grew up on well water in the country in Ohio, and it was cold and wonderful, but here in Texas the treated water is terrible. It's considered safe to drink, but I just like it colder.

S.:

Our water is fine to drink. It tastes just fine too. Here's a link from the EPA...
http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/

We don't buy bottled here unless it's flavored. Other than that - ours is fine!

Yes of course we can.. Even out of the garden hose.. out of the bathroom sink and the tub faucets..

There are certain places that may have funny tasting water due to where the water is from.. like the minerals, it may have a taste.

Fluoride is placed in our drinking water here in town. The water plant here filters the city water.

In some towns the water may be "well" water.. It comes directly from the ground.

Some may have "hard" water.. meaning all of those minerals..

If you are concerned call your water dept in your county and just ask them if the water where you live is safe to drink..

Also sometimes the piper on the older homes have started to disintegrate and so you can add a filter to your tap to get rid of some of that sediment.

I do and always have drunk the water from the tap wherever I have lived in Minnesota, on a farm, suburbs, and in the city.

Oh no... Matter of fact, hell no..
Dallas city water is horrible.
I won't even drink it to take tylenol.
We buy water, and that's sad. My husband was the same way, he is from Louisiana, bout 30 min. Out from New Orleans, and right on the river, there water is wonderful.
When I was first down there and he poured me a glass, I looked at him like "are you crazy" but then I tasted it, so good.

Yes. It is okay to drink water from the tap in most places in the US.

I grew up in Cincinnati and never even thot of NOT drinking the water out of the tap or the garden hose! Then when I got married and moved, my husband had grown up with well water and had always had a filter on the faucet so when we got our own place with a well, I had to get used to that! I don't give it a second thot if I'm at someone's house and I get a drink out of the faucet!

As for buying water - I would never waste the money!!!

The only time I buy bottled water is when I am out of the house and thirsty. We get a yearly water report from our town so we know that is is safe to drink. I have made my kids formula with it and it hasn't bothered them yet.

Of course we can drink water from our tap.

We do it and we also use bottled water as well.

Our water is technically drinkable, meaning it won't harm your health. However, during the summer, in Dallas at least, the water gets a funky smell and taste (kind of like dirt or algea). It won't harm your health, but it's not particularly appealing to drink. So, filtered, purified or bottled water is preferable.

Yes, we can drink water from the tap here.

If you live in Houston, Texas, you do NOT want to drink straight tap water. Since Allison several years ago, and particularly since Hurricane Ike in 2008 and related flooding, there are two "virus" type organisms that cannot be treated out of the water supply without completely replacing the entire system (which ain't gonna happen). I even give bottled water to my pets so as not to cause diarrhea or other problems with them.

Can I drink the water here? Sure. Do I? No. It has a chlorine aftertaste to me and I don't care for it. I have lived in areas where no drinking from the tap was not at all a positive experience, heck I grew up in one.

I drink my tap water. I grew up in New Orleans, dubious water at best, and we always drank the tap water. AND, we don't glow in the dark. :P

Here in Portland, we have great tap water. (some people actually have bumper stickers that proclaim their allegiance to our tap water!) That said, we used to filter our water until we had our old pipes removed and replaced with Pex pipes.

I have to admit, though, that when traveling, the tap water in other towns often just doesn't taste good at all, and then we'll buy a large bottle of water and refill our reusable metal water bottles. Perhaps we're spoiled here?

We can. We do have a fridge that has a filter, so generally I drink water from that though.

I don't know anyone who buys water in MN, unless they are out and about and forgot their bottle.

Hi! Of course you can drink tap water, it's the water bottlers that don't want you to drink tap water. Any water that comes from a water treatment facility is regularly tested and safe to drink. The problem arises when water plants have to add certain chemicals that leave the water with a taste noticeable to some people, it's a personal thing but perfectly safe. NYC has the best water of any city. If you have a private well and have never had it tested you should, you may not even want to be bathing in it.

we can drink ours straight from the tap. My daughter and I do but my husband prefers his to be filtered for some reason.

Technically the water is safe to drink straight from the tap. The problem is all the chemicals they add to the water to make it safe as well as the added fluoride in most places make it taste awful, it will sometimes smell just as awful. Also the source water will have different naturally occurring minerals that effect the taste of the water.
Some places if the source water has a pleasant mineral composition and they do not have to add a lot of chemicals to clean it up you can drink it straight from the tap.
Were we live, there is no way in heck we can drink the water from the tap. It tastes horrible. It will smell like chlorine now and again which we are told is safe but it certainly doesn't make it enjoyable to drink. We also believe that there is such a thing as too much fluoride and we have fluoride added to our tap water in our water district.
We run our water through filters before we drink it to clean up the taste and filter out some of the excess fluoride. If we're cooking we will use it straight from the tap most of the time.
Those water filling places are basically large filter machines that clean out some of the muck, making the water taste and smell better. Think like a large Brita filter.
I have to admit, it is pretty sad that in a developed country like ours we can't avoid nasty drinking water but it's the truth of things.

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We have a well, so we drink well water and it's very good. We've had it tested and it's very clean and safe to drink. We do not have town water, which a lot of people around here do and it doesn't taste as good, but is still safe to drink. That's why people buy it.

I live in the Pacific Northwest...WA state and we have great tap water!

I grew up in CA on bottled water (Sparklets) and was amazed at how good the tap water was here in WA! We are lucky too!

~BUt I have to admit I still buy bottled water b/c even though the tap water is drinkable I am used to the taste of bottled water....my husband thinks I am ridiculous!

I am allergic to fluoride. (Seriously, I get ill. I am very susceptible to fluoride toxicity.) We have to buy a specialized filter, that filters out the fluoride from tap water. The tap water tastes OK here most of the year. However, in the summer it's SO disgusting. The heat causes a lot of algae in the lake our water is sourced from. While harmless (and of course, filtered) it changes the taste drastically. The water is also hard here, and especially hard in the summers. We do buy bottled water in the summers. I pretty much only drink water and hot tea. If we relied on tap water during the summer, I would never drink anything. It really is nasty.

Our old house had city water and we drank right from the tap.
Our current house has well water and it's got a lot of iron and sulfur in it.
You can't drink it.
So we have a water softener, a Culligan filter and a small chlorine tank and we shower and wash in water after it's been treated.
You CAN drink that water, but it's a bit salty and the toilets still get some rust stains that need to be scrubbed out from time to time.
We have a reverse osmosis filter under the kitchen sink and that's the water we drink and cook with and there's a line from it to the fridge for the ice maker.

Yes, I drink my tap water. The environmental impact of bottled water is horrendous - the plastic used to make the bottles, the bottles that are not recycled, the amount of gasoline used to truck water across the country. More than 1/2 of the bottled water that people buy actually is municipal water - but with a fancy name.

We have a well also, but I came here from California and let me say, until you have tried water straight from it's source you do not know how good it can be. We rarely buy bottled water, we have reusable water bottles and always fill them up at home.

We do drink straight from the tap. It's safe.

I did see that a mom on here mentioned drinking out of a garden hose. Please don't do that. Besides bacteria that can get into the hose from it being in your yard, hoses can also have fixtures on them that contain lead. I drank from the hose as a kid, but now we know better....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/21/study-finds-gard...

Oh my, our drinking water, ya know, out of the tap is bottled and distributed as drinking water across the US so yeah, you can drink it.

The water in Peoria, where my husband used to live, you couldn't pay me to drink that water! There aren't chemicals, and most drinking water is not full of chemicals, it is minerals that make it taste awful.

My uncle has a well at his lake house. Couldn't pay me to drink that either. Apparently St Louis has some of the best drinking water in the country, everything taste bad to me when we travel.

Oh, went the the UK, London to be specific, your water tastes like poo too.

we switched to river water in the past ten years. it definatly has a muddy taste to it. right after the switch it smelled muddy in the shower also but I think I finally got use to the smell. Our water does contain gasses that are added to it. One doctor suggested to pour water in an open pitcher over night to allow the gasses to release from the water and evaporate. IDK spring water is what we buy to drink. Its cheap enough.

according to government-required testing parameters....yes, we can drink from the tap.

but I don't always like it. I preferred bottled quite often.

& here's the gross part: on Christmas, I loaded my/my Mom's stocking with nail polish, etc. We both did our nails....same brand. Both of us experienced totally absurd results, & we thought it was the new polish. We both had issues with the polish on the entire nail popping off in 1-2 pieces....on almost all fingers. !!

We both assumed it was defective polish, but we've used ours since then & the results were perfect/long-lasting.

& now for the rest of the story: one month later, we received a letter from the city explaining that the city water had failed the testing parameters twice the week of Christmas! I have NO doubt the contaminants are what caused the issues we experienced with the nail polish.....since it's been fine since. How gross is that?

I try to keep bottled water on hand.....

Yep, I drink my tap water.....

we have water through our fridge. But, it was broken for a while and we did try the sink water. It was HORRIBLE! Totally gross and even made my stomach hurt. So, for a while we did buy water by the gallon. But, thankfully our fridge water is working again :)

Of course we can drink straight from the tap... most of the time. There have been times when the MDC (water co.) has established warnings where we have to boil the water first before drinking. And we've had issues when the pipes have burst and the water became muddy and rust-colored until they got it fixed.

Right now, our water is safe but the MDC is going to be fixing all of the piping on my street because they're the original system and my town is the first or second chartered town in New England. So, wicked old pipes. We used to filter our water when we lived in our townhouse because the water tasted horrible. When we moved here we found it tastes sweet and nice, so here they do a better job filtering out deposits and rust.

Around here, people with well water are encouraged to filter their drinking water.

Tap water is perfectly fine to drink. The chemicals to which your DH was referring are Chlorine and floride. Most municipalities put both in their water. One to sanitize it and the other to combat tooth decay.

There are people who are against both chemicals being in the water, so they choose to buy bottled water. As for taste, it totally depends on the source of the water. The water where I live is not to great. It has lots of dissolved minerals that give it a funky taste. Guess what? I use a home water filter and drink it anyway.

I personally think most American are WAY too spoilt and need to realize just how good we have it....

I have a Brita water filter in my fridge. You fill it up with tap water, and it filters out things you wouldn't want to drink. So the water is left fresh and tastes great! :)

I live in WA state. Everyone I know drinks tap water just fine.
I grew up in Southern CA and we never drank tap water, it was nasty. When we moved up here (20 some odd years ago) my brother and I were floored by how good the tap water was. It was so fresh and clear!!

all tap water from public systems in the US is perfectly safe to drink. unlike the EU, chlorine is used in the finished water - some people have concerns about it. however, we have forgotten how bad water-based diseases can be - a little chlorine ( and the small, small, small chance it might cause cancer when you're 70) is well worth that trade off. some people also have issues with fluoride, which is added to about 50% of municipalities' drinking water to promote dental health. what people fail to understand with fluoride that is little is absolutely critical but a lot is toxic - the amount in drinking water promotes dental health with absolutely no ill effects.

so, there is a lot of bad, pseudo science out there that people are making decisions on with regards to drinking water. along with a ton of marketing from bottled water/home filtration companies. it is perfectly safe and all right to drink straight from the tap anywhere that is a public drinking water system (wells in private homes are another matter). however, if you don't like the taste, then by all means, purchase a filter.

for example, we do nothing at home except put it in the fridge so that it is cold when we want it. but at my in-laws in another state....their system is too cheap to use the chemical that removes the muddy taste - we use bottled water because we don't stay hydrated otherwise because we just can't stand it. if we lived there, I'd make us get used to it but since it is only a few days a year - bottled it is.

if you do use a filter, be sure to follow the manufacturer's directions to the letter - you can end up with much worse water that can actually make you sick if you don't.

although your water may taste wonderful, have you had it tested? It will cost upwards of $2k but....many domestic wells exceed the EPA's limits on one or more parameters. for example, in Colorado almost all wells in the mountains exceed limits for radioactivity and radon - they taste great but the water will cause disease over time. In Texas, particularly if you're near agriculture, I'd be concerned about pesticides and nitrates. contact your state or county health department and they can direct you to reputable testing companies and what you should test for.

Yes you can absolutely drink the tap water. There are so many regulations on the water systems here that by law they have to be safe to drink. My husband is a plumber and has to keep up with any changes they put into place. Some people just don't like the taste of their water because depending on where you live will determine where it comes from or how "Hard" it is. We are in Pflugerville and have a hard level of 16 which can be rough on pipes and tends to have extra stuff in the water and has a ok taste. I grew up in Austin and loved that water so my husband installed a whole house filter and the water tastes much better now. Those who by bottled water should read the label because most bottled water comes from a near by tap water system. Oh and I'm now 32 and have just now gotten my first cavity and was told that my teeth were healthy because I always drink the tap water that has flouride in it. Enjoy a tall glass of ice tap water. :D

I sure do, by the gallons in fact. Luckily I live in the city that won a "best water" contest earlier this year. The idea of buying water to me is crazy but after reading some of these posts I understand why people do.

We drink tap water but I only drink it with the purifier. Our water is perfectly fine, but kind of smells like wet dog to me.

We drink our tap water and it's cold right from the tap too!!

I grew up on the South side of OKC and would stand and drink cup after cup of water straight up, tap water temp. I have lived in a couple of towns in OK and their water was also good. The place I live now has nasty tasting water.

I have also learned I only really like super ice cold water. I buy nursery water for the kids bottles when they were younger, and now I buy distilled for hubby so he won't be as likely to form kidney stones. Our water is pretty hard.

I cannot drink the water straight out of the tap here. I do drink it out of the door fridge in a glass full to the top of crushed ice.

Yep, you're right it is pretty third world. Our country has slipped a bit in the last few decades. In fact there are quite a few situations we Americans find ourselves in at this point that are pretty third world compared to what they used to be or in my opinion what they should be.

infant mortality rate
gun violence
disappearing middle class
gap between rich and poor
poor state of our education system
crumbling infrastructure

& the fact that even though we are told our tap water is safe to drink in many parts of the country that often is not the case. It is NOT just that it tastes bad...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/us/17water.html?pagewan...