Unfiltered tap water: good or bad?

Bad

Won't hurt you.

Buy a Brita just to be safe.

Buy ALL bottled water.

I used to work for a company in Boston that provided water purification systems both for companies and for residential. You answered your own question here really, It varies from town to town.

For example, in eastern Massachusetts, drinking water generally either comes from wells or from the Quabbin Reservoir. Water from the reservoir is extremely clean right up until the time it hits those ancient Boston pipes. There it picks up so much garbage that it becomes hideous.

I remember driving from office to office in Boston, changing filters. I would put these filters in chalky white. 2 weeks later they would be covered with a layer of sludge. Then I would change a filter out at an office building in the suburbs and even after 2 or 3 months, the filter would still be bright grey. And that was just the sediment filter stage. The systems I worked on used sediment filtering, carbon filters, and reverse osmosis to purify the water in a 3 step process. God only knows what the other two stages removed.

I can't give you demographic data on what that stuff does to you, but I can tell you after having seen it just one time back in 1990, I have not had a drink from a public water source since and I never will. It was that bad.

you do know that some bottled water IS tap water?

nestle has a big "water mining" plant in michigan as i recall. much of the nestle water you buy is from lake michigan. i can turn on my tap and get that.

aquafina is TAP water that they filter.

if you want to save the planet, stop drinking bottled water and throwing away all those plastic bottles that end up in landfills.

sam w wrote:

aquafina is TAP water that they filter.

Aquafina is more than filters. It also uses reverse osmosis to purify the water. It is extremely clean water.

The company I used to work for had all the various bottled waters tested against it's own purified water back then. I think this was before Aquafina even came out. Anyway, as I recall the cleanest of the bottled waters was Poland Spring.

Check the label of your bottled water. If it says PWS somewhere it is tap water.

It starts as tap water and then it is filtered using charcoal, RO, etc. This whole thing is a bit of a tempest in a teacup. Aquafina is cleaner than pretty much any untreated "natural" water you're going to find.

don't know about unfiltered tap water but unfiltered wheat beer is GOOD

tap water has to meet certain standards while bottled water does not. that's not to say that SOME bottled water is not better, but tap water gets a bad wrap...and if in doubt, use a charcoal filter or a brita pitcher and you are pretty much in the clear.

People freak out about water too much, like if we put anything besides 100% pure water in your body you'll die.

Our ancestors drank just piss poor awful water and they somehow managed to survive. If you live in the united states you receive some of the cleanest water man's ever tasted....but somehow that's not good enough. People eat steroid enhanced crappy beef burgers from fast food restaurants everyday of their life and make it into their 50's without having a heart attack or health issues, but tap water, watch out for that.

When was the last time you heard of someone dying from tap water?

if you live in NY, below anything we real nyers would call "upstate," and your shower doesn't smell like sulfur, then for fvck's sake, STOP DRINKING BOTTLED WATER!!!

please.

gas is 3.47+. beer is more expensive because of ethanol. oil problems all around. please, PLEASE, stop drinking bottled water.

we have some of the best tap water in the country. i fill my work's 5 gal bottle with tap, and everyone loves it, and i don't bother telling them that it's tap. "so much better that what comes out of the faucet," they say!

i smile.