Asklemmy

In Argentina, generally you can drink straight from the tap.

In Malaysia, the water is advertised as safe to drink. Large majority however, either boils it or uses their own water filters.

Even better, I do not boil I run though and store in a Brita pitcher that should have had a filter change six months ago!

No, I never drank unfiltered tap water. I have always lived in areas with poor-tasting tap water. It's not necessarily dangerous, but has a high calcium content and isn't the cleanest either.

As a kid, we had a carbon filter on our refrigerator, and that was good enough. When I moved out of my parents house, I started getting those 5 gallon bottles and would refill them at the grocery store.

I eventually got my own refrigerator that had a carbon filter, but I couldn't really go back to a carbon filter once I got used to water filtered by a RO system. It just didn't taste very good. So about a month ago I installed a RO filter under my sink, and now I don't need to drag my bottles to the store anymore. Best of both worlds!

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

I'm from germany and I drink my tap water without cooking it first, straight from the tap.

I drink tap water, but ours comes from our private well. We double filter it: sediment then carbon. Back in Costa Rica I also drank tap water, Costa Rica has one of the safest water.

I'm from Italy and i drink tap water since I was child. Never had any problem. But I was told to check tubature aging and materials first, if it's new and not made in lead metal, it's safe.

Canada here - I drink water straight from the tap.

Although Canadian tap water is some of the highest quality tap water in the world.

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.

I live in Brazil. When I lived on the farm, father set it up so the water would come from a natural underground mine and it was entirely safe to drink. However, in the town, we always bought gallons of packet water instead of using it from the tap. In the city I drank tap water for some years and didn't die, but the taste of the water changed when we began using a filter (thought it was likely that it was because the thing connecting our tap to the system was made out of rubber and a colony of bacteriae began to grow there).

Still, Brazil as a whole is mid risk for intestinal parasites and everyone is recommended to get a filter or packed water by the UN, and also to take anti-vermin medicine once per year.

yep, i'll drink straight from the tap. i live in california, united states. it is even common to have drinking fountains in public spaces: special button activated taps that spurt cool tap water into the air for you to drink from.

Bermuda here, straight from the tap!

It actually gets collected from rain water on each individual home's roof. The roofs are lime-washed to kill the really nasty stuff as it runs down in to a holding tank under the house. Some times you get dead critters in there, but nothing larger than a small lizard or bug. They tend to sink to the bottom of the tank, below the outlets.

Most Bermudians swear by a "cup of bleach" thrown down there every couple of years. It's in to a tank that's 10,000gal+ at a minimum (mine's over 40,000), so it's basically homeopathy at that point - but the lime-wash works!

The only place you'll want to avoid it in Bermuda is in the City of Hamilton (mains, not great quality), a house with a dirty roof, or in one near the sole power station on the island. This is an on-going fight to get them to adhere to the emissions safety standards they claim to.

White roofs and smoke stack in the picture!

Yes, the quality of tap water here in the Netherlands is excellent, better than bottled water even (the safety regulations for tap water are stricter than they are for bottled water). No need to boil it at all, you drink it straight from the tap.

I live in Vietnam and boiling water before drinking is the bare minimum you have to do. People generally install filtration system and in some part the tap quality is so poor that you need to use bottled water regardless.

USA: Yes, I drink tap 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.

US/Canada here as well as someone that has visited most of western 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 western 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. The water in these tanks sat stagnant and was therefore prone to rats and other creatures dying in it or bacteria building up. This is why still today, most British homes have separate hot/cold taps - to keep the "safe" water separate from the "dangerous" water. 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.

Although lots of tapwater around the world is safe it might still be a good idea to boil the water or buy bottled water when your on holiday in another country. There are different bacteria in different water and if you’re not used to those bacteria you could end up with diarrhoea during your stay.

I’m from Belgium myself and when I go to Spain I never drink from the tap, bc I found out the hard way once. But water in France and the Netherlands are safe for me.

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.

When i lived in hongkong i never boiled the water, i just drank it from the tap

You can safely drink unboiled tapwater in most places in Poland.

US here - I could drink from the tap but I prefer to boil first anyway.

Here in Armenia all tap water is drinkable as is

South Africa - tap water is perfectly fine to drink and we all do, delicious even in my area. My mom doesn't, but she's a bit paranoid.

Southern US: We have a private well on our property and the water is of course filtered to the whole house (changed often) and regularly tested; It's perfectly fine to drink without boiling.

New Zealand and yes it's safe to drink without boiling here. I do run the tap for a few seconds to clear out any standing water before drinking anything though.