My Friend Won't Drink Water Out of the Tap

[MoseyWalker]

She just asked me to go out to the car to get a bottled water for her.

I told her that the water coming out of the tap was 10 times more safe, and a thousand times cheaper.

She got pissed, and said, "I don't drink water out of the tap, ever."

I think that is crazy.

The safest water supply in the state is right here running any time I want it out of my faucet.

Let's see. Pay a dollar and nine cents for 20 ounces of water, or one one thousandth of a cent for a glass of water?

[TahitiNut]

1. ... and then complain about the price of gasoline.

I just don't get it. :shrug:

[MoseyWalker]

5. while you are here/there, I just want to say

you are my favorite writer on this cyberblog.

I won't mention it again, but I hope others take notice.

I appreciate what you say, and just wanted to mention that.

[TahitiNut]

17. (blush)

:blush: You have a very kind and generous spirit. Thank you! :hi:

[Viva_La_Revolution]

21. It's the Rainbow sig thing....

ok, maybe the actual content of his opinions too... but jeez, I hope he doesn't get a big head over it... :evilgrin:

[Le Taz Hot]

47. You're not alone.

I've been an admirer of TN for a LONG time. (Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread.):loveya:

[WindRavenX]

2. I agree, except for one exception:

New Orleans still has unsafe drinking water, iirc.

Other than that, I think it's utterly stupid to pay for tap.

[EFerrari]

3. We couldn't drink tap water in Santa Monica ( L.A. County)

without getting ill, nor could our animals. Up north in San Francisco, my tap water is terrific.

So, no, not all tap water is safe, sorry to say.

[TomInTib]

8. You just gotta love that ol' Hetch Hetchy....

What do you think about the proposal to knock down the dam(s)?

I am totally mixed on it.

[EFerrari]

11. They didn't know what building would do, they don't really know

what knocking them out will do. Me, too.

[brook]

15. No tap water here.

This city uses a combination of well water and California state. Last month the nitrate content shot sky high in the well water. (The state shuts down for annual maintenance in January).
Since I can't afford a reverse osmosis system, it's bottled water for me.

[kestrel91316]

20. LA water is perfectly safe. Unfortunately, the crap they put in it

to make it safe, makes it nearly undrinkable, lol!

I have been using a Britta filter for 10 years now, and couldn't drink a drop without using it. Between the daily swimming-pool chlorination levels, and the rainy-weather garlic-onion stuff they put in, it's pretty disgusting. But it's "safe" from a microbial standpoint.

[EFerrari]

52. It's not safe if it makes you and your animals sick, regardless of

the actual cause. I'm no chemist -- I have no idea why it made us all sick. But no one I knew there drank tap water either. :shrug:

It's sort of funny to me because Santa Monica was the most "upscale" place I've ever lived in and we couldn't drink the water.

/oops

[salin]

28. in East Palo Alto - the water, after a storm,

was brown for a day or two. Couldn't bring myself to drink it. When it wasn't storming it was cloudy - due to lots of 'bubbles' but it wasn't carbonated. Funny that when I was a few blocks away at a friend's house in Menlo Park - the water was fine. Of course at the time (I moved before the serious gentrification began in EPA) - it was the murder capital per capita of the country and a pocket of extreme poverty enveloped by an area of great (tech) wealth. We paid more to take a taxi to the airport than our neighbors two blocks away in Menlo Park, some pizza places wouldn't deliver, and during a huge multiday blackout in 97 or 98 (can't remember which year) there was an embarassment for PG&E when the lights came on more than a day or two before EPA and some worker admitted that they were told by the company that if they weren't able to 'start' the job (workin on lines) in EPA before a certain time in the day that they should skip it to avoid being working there once it got dark. There were denials - followed by appologies (i.e., fessed up that the order had been true). Point being - it depends on where one is as to whether or not the tap water is okay to drink from. Related topic: environmental racism (toxic dumping and other ills dumped in poverty stricken areas of color.)

[EFerrari]

51. All the worst pollution is found or dumped in minority neighborhoods.

I don't have a link for that but remember a documentary I watched on PBS. No surprise, is it?

My 1st mother in law retired in EPA in a small white enclave of retired white people in a mobile home park. It was really something to listen to them talk about dealing with the conditions the rest of EPA had always dealt with.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. Unless you live in AZ

Phoenix water SUCKS.

[Nay]

6. Afriend and I were discussing this just the other day. We're in our

50's, have kids in their 20's, and they ALL buy and drink bottled water, even tho the water in all the towns involved is perfectly tasty and healthy straight from the tap. We don't get it, either. One of the kids said it was more convenient because of the bottle you could carry around, but of course we said to just buy a water bottle and fill it from the tap! She had nothing to say!

I am convinced it's plain old marketing--no wonder the powers that be are convinced we're stupid. None of these kids can really AFFORD to buy bottled water, but they've been convinced somehow that that is the best thing to do. It wasn't us mammas that told them that.

[flyarm]

24. just think how many aren't getting floride for their teeth...wait till

they get old asnd their teeth all fall out!!

personally when i build a home..( I HAVE HAD QUITE A FEW!lol) I ALWAYS PUT A PURIFIER BUILT IN next to the regular tap..i use that water for cooking and coffee and drinking ..it is better than any bottled water...and to be honest i get sick of seeing the plastic bottles on the sides of streets..

and i hate the taste of the plastic bottle..it tastes awful to me!!

glass never bothers me ./but i hate that plastic taste!

fly

[BlooInBloo]

7. I know lots of people like that...

... And I think it's bizarre of each of them.

[purduejake]

9. I filter my tap water.

You got a problem with that too? :P

[MoseyWalker]

12. Nope, but

I just wonder how many truly know how safe and "drinkable" their water supply is without the need to filter.

[The Straight Story]

10. I only smoke filtered cigarettes - so I can understand

:rofl:

[TahitiNut]

18. (LOL!)

I love it! :rofl:

[Fridays Child]

13. Although I'll take an occasional swig from the faucet, when I have to...

...the water here is so heavily chlorinated that it tastes like a swimming pool. It's just not drinkable. But, since individual bottles of water are expensive and wasteful of finite resources, we use a Brita filtration pitcher for our drinking water.

[magellan]

14. Our tap water is so bad we get notices about it from the water company

For the last year it's contained higher than permitted amounts of contaminants, and the latest lovely update -- higher than permitted amounts of LEAD. To rectify this they're building a new facility which is due to be online in May. Till then I use a filter, run the water for 15-20 seconds if it hasn't been run for a few hours, and today I just bought bottled water.

I never worried about tap water before moving to FL. Is there anything right with this state??

[DemBones DemBones]

19. Florida was a great place when I was a kid.

Unfortunately, too many people live there now and that affects the water quality and everything else. I remember when most beaches -- maybe all the beaches -- were public beaches. Now, you can drive along the roads on either coast and go for miles without a glimpse of the Atlantic or Gulf.

[Nay]

45. I grew up in FL too, and it WAS great. I lived on Redington Beach,

we lived like beach bums all summer, there weren't crowds of people -- it sure has changed, hasn't it?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

16. Evian spelt backwards is "Naive". n/t

[alarimer]

22. Most people don't know that a lot of bottled water IS tap water

with a little extra filtration. Look at the bottle sometime. It might say "Corpus Christi Municipal water supply" or Houston or Dallas or a city close to you. They give it some name like "Ozarka" to make you think it comes from clean mountain springs but it is not. Corporations like Coca-cola are also buying up local water supplies to bottle and sell, leaving local communities short if they should grow. Bottled water is, in my opinion, largely a scam. Your local municipality is required to publish and annual report detailing the quality of the water. They list a lot of statistics so you can judge for yourself but generally it is very safe to drink. And if you don't like the taste you can get a filtration system that helps. but bottled water is very environmentally costly, given the plastic bottles they use (and usually throw away). I use bottled water generally only when I am going to be somewhere without a reliable water supply. Most of the time I simply fill a Nalgene bottle with tap water.

[Kali]

39. and RO is very ineffecient - wastes a LOT of water

[DesertRat]

23. Maybe it's about taste?

Our tap water smells and tastes terrible. That's why I drink bottled water.

[immoderate]

25. I drink seltzer.

It's bottled, has those fun bubbles, costs less than the cheapest bottled water. :)

--IMM

[MoseyWalker]

29. Watch out for calcium deficiency

That's what happens to those who drink to much carbonated "fizzy" water.

[immoderate]

49. I'm gonna check that . Thanks.

If you have a reference that would be appreciated. I've been wondering what the down side is. There's always something.

--IMM

[immoderate]

50. Apparently, seltzer is OK.

The calcium deficiencies are linked to the high levels of phosphorus in drinks like Coke and Pepsi. Seltzer has no phosphorus. As a matter of fact, sometimes I buy club soda, which, in order to avoid sodium, has calcium salts, the opposite of what Coke does.

So it seems quite safe to drink seltzer. No different than water.

--IMM

[karlrschneider]

26. Truly unsafe tap water in the USA is extremely rare, almost nonexistant.

Our little Rural Water company OVERtreats the water from the lake we live alongside to comply with
FDA regulations...to the point it tastes like pool water. But we have a couple of Brita water pitchers, keep them filled and have absolutely no problem with safety or taste. There is absolutely NO guarantee that bottled water is better in ANY way since the packagers are not bound by any regulation! You could put water from the toilet in a bottle and sell it as long as you don't make any unprovable claims on the label!

[dysfunctional press]

27. chicago city tap water is GREAT. and we don't even have a water meter.

nt

[Rockit]

48. When I lived there, I preferred it over bottled any day! nt.

[KittyWampus]

Do you like the taste of chlorine? I don't. Drink well water for a month and THEN

taste tap water and get back to me.

[whistle]

30. Distilled water is the safest to drink

[MoseyWalker]

31. me thinks a mod doesn't like me

oh well.

[madrchsod]

32. our water glows sometimes from radon...

...water is`t bad cause it comes from deep wells and the radon is only at certain depths

[Chan790]

33. I don't drink tap water either.

I won't either...ever.

[MadHound]

34. There are many towns and cities I won't drink tap water

Mainly due to all of the chlorine they put in it. College town that I used to live in did that, so I started filtering my tap water. Moved out to the country, rural water district and they had great tasting water for the first couple of years. Then they shot chlorine gas through the system, so I'm back to filtering.

[Edweird]

35. South florida water is terrible

city of west palm beach water is green. and undrinkable. That extra filtration makes all the difference. Yum.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

36. Do the plastic bottles put chemicals in the water?

I drink bottled water a lot. But I usually refill the bottle from the tap, or from the nearest drinking fountain.

But I wonder about the safety of the plastic container.

[Left Is Write]

37. There's no way I'd drink the tap water at my parents' house.

Neither do they! It's awful.

The tap water at my house is fine, but I still like to drink bottled water. I buy a case of it for 3.79, so I'm not too worried.

[KitchenWitch]

38. We mostly drink filtered tap water

but I do have cases of water in the garage, for when we are in the car, and in case an earthquake affects our water supply. I have the "big one's gonna hit" mindset now that I live in California.

[Redstone]

40. Not to mention all the fucking TRASH from the empties! And all the fossil fuel used to make

the bottles, run the bottling plants, and truck the goddamn heavy stuff around!

People like your friend should be ashamed of themselves.

Redstone

[Rhythm]

41. my SO doesn't drink 'plain' water, ever...

we usually buy either sugar-free drink mixes, or get her flavored bottled water (the grape Aqua Fina is her current fave)

Me?! i'd drink straight out of the garden hose...

[sasquatch]

42. My geology professor's won't drink tap water either

Unless there's a secondary filter built into the line obviously.

[girl gone mad]

43. Dallas has a great filtration system.

I think it's actually better than what most of the bottling companies use.

What I don't get is the run on bottled water every time there's some kind of imminent weather-related event or blackout, etc. Why don't people just fill up containers while their water is still running and put them in the fridge? Strange.

[Scooter24]

44. I never drink tap water either.

I've had my share of bad experiences. I have a few cases of Fiji water sitting in my pantry.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

46. I can't stand our tap water.

I don't like to pay high prices for spring water either. So I buy filtered water. One of these days, I'll buy a filter for our tap.

[Saphire]

53. tap water here is so full of lime it's hard to drink.. We have to filter

all of it, or it ruins everything it comes into contact with. Coffee pots, especially. And I have had to replace my dishwasher because of it. I keep Lime-a-way in business.

[InvisibleTouch]

54. Brita filter for me.

I object to paying for a bottle of water that's just as contaminated as anything that comes out of the tap, in addition to the questionable safety of the soft-plastic bottle. I use a Brita filter for my drinking and cooking water, and to water the dogs. If I'm travelling, I'll fill a plastic bottle from the Brita pitcher (now and again won't hurt anything), and if I really must, I'll drink from the tap, but I try to avoid it. Have got a chlorine filter on my shower, too. The more you can cut down on exposure to unnecessary chemicals, the better - because you're inundated by toxins in the environment no matter what you do.