Asklemmy

northern USA and we have some of the cleanest tap water in the country. Drink it all day from the tap you will never get sick from it, just tastes like nice water.

France : we drink tap water directly without any issue. People who drink bottled water is because they dislike the taste of tap water where they live.

I live in Ecuador. Tap water can be drunk without boiling on the capital and most other cities in the andes. In the Amazon and the pacific is better to boil it first. Guayaquil the second largest city has a reputation of having incredibly dangerous water

Switzerland here,

Yes we absolutely drink tap water here, not only it is well regulated but it may also beat many bottled water in terms of taste..

The further I searched, the more it seems to me that in developed countries (like US, Canada and the above examples), tap water is safe to drink directly. Is that true? Do you drink tap water without boiling?

Yes. It's a bit of a scandal when that's not true. (Canada here)

And to my surprise, I checked the Water Supplies Department website and notice it asserts that tap water in Hong Kong is potable, like many well-developed countries and regions.

Boiling it has to be "force of habit", then. I wonder how long it's been potable. I'm guessing mainland China is mostly boil-first.

Croatia here,

tap water is completely drinkable and safe without any boiling. Exception are some more remote islands, so if you are going on some island, chekc if the tap water is drinkable.

Fun fact: Croatia actually uses drinkable water for toilets as well, altough i would not drink from a toilet :)

I believe in Canada we have high standards for our potable water, unlike the UK for example our water heaters need to be up to par (UK typically has seperate taps AFAIK).

So no need to boil, also if you're trying to get rid of chlorine you can just use Brita filters, carbon filters that restaurants use do the same AFAIK. Also even cities like mine which (at least at some point before now) had way more houses than apartments still chlorinated the entire city's supply.

Filters are insanely good these days. I was thinking about getting a life straw, but there's a slightly more expensive alternative that can do like 500x more filtering before it needs to be replaced, and comes with a pouch you can fill and then pour into a regular water bottle. Life straws are meant to be drank from directly, and the alternatives that company offers are just water bottles with life straws built in - so you put unfiltered water in the bottle itself... Probably gets gross or requires constant cleaning

Here in El Salvador, you can drink tap water safely depending the region you are.

US it depends on where you live. I grew up and live now in upstate NY and the tap water is great. In between I lived in Arizona and the water was terrible. I have at different times a water cooler or an undersink reverse osmosis. The water wouldn't make you sick though so you can drink it if needed, it was just very hard and tasted bad.

In switzerland, we can drink the tap water without boiling it first.

I'm from Chile and we drink tap water without boiling. Some people buy filtered water because they dont like the taste, not because is unsafe.

It shocked me when I visited Peru and Mexico and realized that tap water is not safe there.

I do. When I was a child, I was even confused about why people don't drink tap water but buy them instead from shops or why they boil or someway disinfect them.

Scotland here. We don't boil water before use.

I have family down in North West England that do have to do this, though. They live in an area where there is a thin layer of soil and a lot of clay. The water isn't particularly hard but it also doesn't taste very nice if you don't boil it first.

I’ve never boiled tap. It’s safe where I live. I do have a reverse osmosis filter though. But only for taste, and to remove hardness to protect my glassware.

Argentina, drinking filtered tap water rn (not boiled). It's said to be safe but quality may vary throughout the country. Although it's not recommend for small childrens

I live in the Netherlands and we drink tap water without boiling.

I live in Bavaria, Germany, and I've been drinking tap water here for over 30 years without boiling.

But I live in a rural area. I once had a job in the industrial area of a semi-sized city and the tap water there was sketchy.

Depends, I guess.

nyc us here, only boil water if there is a warning due to a pipe break or something.

Not at all...where I live tap water isn't clean at all. It comes in a white colour with pression. And mining industry contaminated a lot

Im from Newfoundland Canada. The city I live in has a water treatment facility and the tap water is perfectly fine to drink without any filtering or boiling.

Many smaller towns in my province only have natural water sources (lakes/ponds/streams) or wells for their water supply. The town I grew up in was like that up till about 2005-2006ish. It was pretty rare for us to have to boil water though, maybe 3 weeks out of the whole year, a neighboring town with a different water supply had to boil their water for most of the year so there was alot of variability.

In Canada I don't boil it.

In Vietnam, I do. Although more because I'm always making tea than anything else. Unless it's well water, in which case that's only for doing dishes, I won't drink that.

I did nearly die from cholera some years back, but it was probably not from the tap water specifically. Sanitation and food safety has really improved here in the last decade, I'm happy to say.

I live in the USA, and we don't have to boil tap water in my city, but after having lived for a spell in a place where tap water is boiled first, I boil mine because I like the way it tastes--it's sweeter. Maybe boiling it helps get rid of the chlorine taste that city water has? I don't know. But I do prefer it.

Australia here - we drink water straight from the tap, but I picked up the habit of drinking boiled water from my frequent trips to Shanghai.

In Sweden, yes tap water is safe without boiling. Might want to filter for taste reasons.

I would drink the water in Iceland without boiling it, probably without a second thought. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it tastes amazing.

I have been to Iceland recently and tap water is absolutely fine to drink directly and preferred. No one there buys water. Just make sure you drink the cold water and not the hot one as the hot is from natural thermal springs so may contain some minerals I belive. Just carry your own bottles and you can fill up the cold water from anywhere, even restaurants will refill free.

Straight and fresh from the pipes! Writing from Transilvania, Romania.

Here in the UK we just drink straight from the (cold water only by law due to differring regulations) tap without boiling and that's been the case for decades at the least across the entire nation. There's just no need to boil the water here unless you are cooking.

It's also safe in Iceland, I went there and their water is crystal clear and pure since it's sraight from the glaciers. You could drink out of a random stream there.

Philadelphia, PA, USA. We don't boil it, but I have a filter on the tap. The drinking water here is safe, but it smells funny, and my family filtered the water even back when we lived somewhere with better tasting water.

In England we drink straight from the tap. I live in London which has incredibly hard water so it's not the nicest tasting and it will leave white residue on the glass but it's not bad for you.

Australia: We don't boil tap water here in Australia.

You can drink the tap water in most places in Iceland without boiling it (especially in Reykjavik), but if you're further into the countryside then I would check first!

I lived in Taiwan and was taught to boil. I'm starting to think you probably don't need to but we just grew up not knowing any better. In Australia you don't. I drink out of any tap that's not a rain water tap. Lots of Asians here still buy bottled water or boil water out regardless. So it seems to be out of uninformed fear or habit.

My belief is unless a local government/health authority tells you you can't drink straight from the tap. I'm inclined to believe it's safe.

In the Philippines, we don't drink from the tap. At all. It's quite dangerous and there have been a number of internet personalities that got stomach aches from drinking tap water ^cough^ ^haachama^ ^cough^

Instead, there are a lot of establishments here that sell drinkable water at a fraction of a dollar per 5 gallons.

Australia here, yes most people drink it without boiling but it depends a little what region you’re in. Some bits of the fat north or some island towns, you may be better off boiling it. Lots of people in the city use built in filter taps but I kind of write that off as con job.