Germany here. My family and I drink tap-water all the time. No problems. Sometimes the Water could be contaminated with certain bacteria, but thats rare and the local government will warn you.

Northern California, United States.

I filter my tap water mostly for taste, but it's completely safe to drink without boiling. I would even argue that it's beneficial to drink because of the fluoride (I'm not an anti-fluoride/anti-science nutjob).

Illinois, US. tap water has always been safe to drink wherever I've lived in this state. I've only been under a boil order a couple times in my life. That being said, I do filter my tap water otherwise it tastes strange to me

I'm in Canada and we drink from the tap.

In NL, the public water company pulls their water literally from the exact same springs as the expensive bottled waters (no joke). So our water is exactly the same.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Canadian here, drinking water right of the tap.

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

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

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

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.

I grew up on well water and was used to drinking from the garden hose when working out in the yard; but thats southern US for ya.

Now days, jus fill a bottle from the tap and don't really put much thought to it.

I live in Sweden. Yeah, the tap water is clean and can be drank straight from the tap without boiling, filtering, or treatment in the whole country.

Canadian in a major city - yes, safe to drink right from the tap.

However, many remote communities here do not have access to safe drinking 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.

Yes, living in the US, it's safe to assume that any tap water is safe to drink without boiling. Sometimes it doesn't taste great because of mineral content, but it's safe with very few exceptions.

That's also been the case in any developed country that I have visited, including Iceland, Canada, pretty much all of Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. There may be exceptions in all of those places, but in any large city in a developed country you can drink the tap water.

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.

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.

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

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.