Asklemmy

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.

Dublin, Ireland here. Always drank water straight from the tap. Unless there is some kind of issue with the water system in your area, then a notice will be put out to tell people to boil water before drinking.

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.

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.

Finland: We drink tap water without boiling.

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

Finnish here and the tap water here is one of the cleanest in the world, so yeah, I drink straight from the tap.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I’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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Spaniard here. I've been drinking unboiled tap water since I was a kid. It's perfectly safe to do that.

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.

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.

Canadian here, drinking water right of the tap.

I'm from 🇵🇭, particularly Davao City (southern part of the country).

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

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

It's super strange for me to only drink bottled water/filtered abroad.

I've visited Peru and when I said to locals that we drink tap water directly they just didn't believe. It was unthinkable to them. And the bottled water was not cheap there...

I'm Portuguese

In Canada, I know people from Hong Kong who still boil water before drinking. They have been in Canada for 40+ years, have seen everyone around them drink tap water, and yet hang on to this ritual of boiling copious amounts of water.

Yes of course it's safe. I drink filtered water from our fridge, but tap is perfectly fine too. I'm from Europe btw.

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.

nyc us here, only boil water if there is a warning due to a pipe break or something.

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

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.

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.

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.

Australia: We don't boil tap water here in Australia.

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.

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