[anexprogrammer]

What's wrong with your tap water? Don't they have the same safety standards to meet?

UK tap water is great (Well, outside of Greater London where it's basically limestone slurry). I've never bought bottled or filtered aside from the brief time I was in London.

At least two brands of UK bottled water were bottling northern tap water and selling it. Business idea I wish I had thought of!

[hoof_marks]

Indeed its India, Calcutta I'm talking about. True 20 years back (1996 and before.. vaguely) that's when we were children the Ganges water was clean. It is too polluted now to drink it straight away. And nobody really drinks it taking it straight from the tap. There were times when NGOs offered large earthen pots of cool water free on the streets. In my home we have a non-electric Ceramic water filter. But the current norm is electric RO +UV filters.

Arsenic is present in ground water in south Calcutta and is a health problem. Municipal water is arsenic free. It is treated with Chlorine.

Much/All of this pollution is self created by polluting the rivers. Individually, industrially and socially.

I believe that using bottled water should be an exception and availability of tap/filtered water at public places should be a norm. But bottled water has become a necessity and a fad today.

I do admire the places mentioned where you enjoy pure water still. I know that in New York the water comes from upstate reservoirs. I also think many places water fountain is available at public places/streets for drinking. If you know the cities you've seen this let me know I'll make a note of it.

[bbgm]

We were boiling water before drinking and using filters in India in the 80s. The decline started a long time ago.

[david-given]

Tap water in the UK is heavily chlorinated. If you go to a country which doesn't chlorinate tap water it's like night and day.

(I live in Zurich. The water company here say that comparing Zurich tap water with bottled mineral water is unfair --- their tap water is considerably better.)

[anexprogrammer]

Not sure if it's down to how hard the water is in each area, but here (NW England), a fairly soft water area, you never notice the chlorination. You notice the chlorine quite a bit in London, along with the free limestone in every glass.

[amouat]

Tap water in the UK varies greatly around the country. The water in Edinburgh seems pretty good, some other parts of the country taste surprisingly different.

[BjoernKW]

If I'm not mistaken he's talking about India. It's common advice (for travellers at least) to only drink bottled water in India.

[anexprogrammer]

He mentions 2 decades ago it being fine, so I presume not India. The advice to only drink bottled in India was common 20 years ago too.

[hoof_marks]

India, Calcutta. But now all over India hardly one will be drinking tap water straight away. Some filter process is always done at point of drinking.

These days its so sad to find every shop ordering a container of filtered drinking water. Earlier it was available through taps. Now no one trusts tap water.

[x0x0]

Are your fellow citizens not pissed about this? Is there similar environmental movements as in the US 60 years ago? (And don't be too discouraged; Silent Spring was published in the early 60s and Love Canal occurred in the late 70s I think. The Cuyahoga River caught on fire multiple times, the last spurring the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.)

[tushar-r]

It still is, We don't drink tap water in Bangalore either. Very very rare to see folks drinking water straight out of the tap - the water supply isn't potable.

Most urban households have some kind of filtration system in place. The water supply infra is quite bad, with frequent contamination due to leakage.

[pmontra]

If it's India they have a problem of arsenic contamination of groundwater, plus bacterial contamination of surface water.

[tluyben2]

Dutch tap water is great too. Joy to drink.

[qb45]

> What's wrong with your tap water? Don't they have the same safety standards to meet?

Tap water quality varies from place to place. For example, in SV (at least Sunnyvale, Santa Clara) it stinks so badly that I barely care whether it meets safety standards or not. OTOH, in my home city it's pretty fine and at some other place I lived it was halfway between.