[Assadi]

A lot of Russians also believe things like drinking water with ice cubes will give you a sore throat. I wouldn't put too much stock in something just because the locals believe it.

Personally, I think the water boiling thing is one of the dumber things they do because, at least in most of the big cities, the thing that is most likely to be wrong with the water is not bacteria and other things that would be killed by boiling your water but rather heavy metals (and, last I checked, boiling my water does not remove lead!).

Also, anecdotally, I've yet to die from drinking from drinking unfiltered Tomsk tap water & never noticed abnormal levels of anything nasty during blood work. I think there is a lot of paranoia about the water system here that has generally been undeserved over the past decade or so.