This question is obviously intended for those that live in places where tap water is “safe to drink.”
I live in Southern California, where I’m at the end of a long chain of cities. Occasionally, the tap smells of sulfur, hardness changes, or it tastes… odd. I’m curious about the perspective of people that are directly involved and their reasoning.
I trust the city government with my water much much more than companies trying to save every penny bottling water.
And I’m more likely able to get the people responsible for poor quality water or death in result of this in jail over the likelihood of sending billionaire CEOs with their golden parachutes to a minimum security vacation “prison”.
whoopsie daisy, we shipped 500 million bottles of tainted water, “we’re sorry”. Meanwhile if a city did that it’d be national news for years.
While I’m a huge fan of municipal water (I live in the city that invented it), lots of cities have horribly mismanaged their water supply, often from privatization, but not exclusively. See Jackson Mississippi.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/31/1120166328/jackson-mississippi-water-crisis
Oh not saying it doesn’t happen at all, but it’s blown out of proportion for the most of the US. Main point is exactly that, when a city fucks up it becomes national news, if Pepsi fucked up it’s bottling (which comes from city sources anyway), they say “Oh no, we’re sorry”
cough cough Flint cough
I manage utility services - among other things - for a group of properties - and have had the mains water analysed for chemical and biological contamination at various times. The results have always been absolutely fine. Not just with EU limits, but far, far, far within them for almost everything and definitely well within them for all measures.
I’ve got no issues at all with drinking tap water in the UK, even given the state of the rivers etc.
had the mains water analysed for chemical and biological contamination
Can I ask how you go about doing that? I may want to test some water soon.
I am sure G! will find local water testing for you.
But, before you do that, check your municipal water web site. Mine publishes their testing results. Monthly, iirc.
Of course, this is only part of the puzzle. Your exact tap may have very different results.
In my case, I approached our usual plumbing contractor who have a couple of labs that they usually used. I now go directly to those labs.
Could you tell me which labs? Are they local to you?
We have used ALS Testing in the past. More recently Latis Scientific. Both have been good, we swapped just because of some internal admin thing at one point.
Nice one, thanks
The fda tests bottle water. The epa tests tap water. The standards for the fda are lower than the epa. You’re being bambozzled.
How exactly? /s
I never said what I thought in any direction. I simply stated some leading observations without conclusions about their meaning.
Once upon a time I worked for an asphalt company as an operator at the plants and rock quarry. When the test inspector showed up, so did the test and inspection mix running through the plant.
That is why I asked in the way this post was worded. I am looking for someone(s) like myself that are experienced and perhaps smart enough to read between the lines of corruption. It is an unlikely person(s) to find here.
Discovering the various perspectives, along with the spectrum of Lemmy that engages with this post are also interesting from a couple of angles.
The water characteristics you’re worried about sound like aesthetic problems, which might be displeasing but pose no real health risks. These vary significantly between public water systems. If the system pulls from surface water, the water might need more treatment in the dry season since contaminants concentrate in surface waters more that time of year. I’m lucky to live somewhere that has no noticeable taste/odor/color issues. For places that do, you should be able to drink it from tap without issue, but it might taste/smell better if you run it through a filter or even just let it sit in a pitcher in the fridge.
If a municipality were to cut corners with their water treatment in a similar way to the asphalt plant you mentioned (which sounds kinda shady btw), people would get sick and potentially die. Most municipalities are very risk averse and take liability seriously to avoid litigation/losing money. So, it’s not impossible, but I think it’d be unlikely for a city to skimp on water treatment just to save a few bucks. Water treatment facilities are also required to constantly test for things like pH, turbidity, and chlorine residual and report to the state, so it’s not as simple as hiding things from an inspector the day of.
The asphalt company is basically all of Los Angeles’ roads. They came up with a way to use recycled asphalt grindings in a MUCH higher percentage of the mix in a process that involved soaking it with diesel fuel for a specific amount of time and mixing it. The loader operator feeding the plant had just enough down time to do the soak and mixing process. This recycled grindings mix was added to the hot aggregate strait out of the drum burner right at the liquid asphalt mixing point. If I recall correctly (after two decades), the allowed limit for recycle was 15% according to the state, but they were able to run between 30%-45% recycle with their methods and it was undetectable in the company engineering test lab. You be the judge of how that falls into corruption versus innovation.
Interesting, thanks for the context. I don’t know anything about asphalt, but if it didn’t cause any health or safety issues I’d place it on the innovation end of the spectrum. I’d be interested in things like how the spent diesel fuel was disposed of and if any petro chems would leach into stormwater from asphalt made this way.
Diesel fuel is the primary solvent of the liquid “AC” they called it aka the black stuff. For instance, you get any hot AC on you, you’re in big trouble because it is super hot, but on your clothing or a spill, the only way to get it cleaned up is with diesel fuel. There are stages of containment around the storage of the stuff. As far as recycle, it is just enough diesel to wet the old AC in the grindings. There is no excess. It has to be wet for the new and old to mix. The operator is wetting the surface well then feeding the aggregate bins for the plant. Each time they feed a bin, they scoop and drop the recycle grindings. Every 4-5 times, they add a scoop to the conveyer bin, put a fresh scoop on the back of the stall, and soak the mix in diesel. The diesel doesn’t penetrate very deep and the point is to keep it consistent. That area is in the second containment zone for AC, so it is not a part of the groundwater environment. Spending a fortune on wasted diesel is also not the point. Feeding the plant is a monotonous routine. Dialing in these kinds of this is all the mental stimulation there is really. The whole job is, service the machine as needed, don’t spin the tires, and NEVER let a aggregate bin go empty or put the wrong class in the wrong bin.
Water and Wastewater operator here. In Texas, where I work and live water is sampled, tested, and reported to TCEQ the Texas specific extension of the EPA. If a water system continually fails to meet water quality standards set out by TCEQ, that system will be taken over by TCEQ and brought back into compliance. All this to say, yes, I drink it because I help make it.
w/ww op in canada. ditto
I work in food manufacturing and get the local water test results emailed to me monthly - they are alway well within limits
I used to live in Los Angeles and lived in Charlie Chaplin’s house that was on the old lot(the current Broadway shoes).
The water coming into the house was probably clean, but the home’s pipes were all lead. I did one of those lead tests and it failed.
So your sulfur taste could be from the home and not from the municipal water.
If you have any reason to suspect the quality of your water, get it tested! It’s not that expensive, you just ship a sample to a lab and they email you a report. Because so many people depend on well water there’s a bunch of labs all over the country that do water quality testing, it’s a relatively cheap and accessible service.
Unless you need a full pathogen panel, you can just buy the tests for pretty much anything at hardware stores. There are kits that include several.
Where I am most people are happy to drink the tap water, and we’re all oddly proud of it. Which is fair, it’s great water. Very soft too, I remember seeing ads on TV for products to remove limescale but that doesn’t really happen here much. I find it a little odd that some places’ tap water is so full of impurities that it leaves mineral deposits on their appliances.
Come to Scotland, try our tap water!
Those aren’t necessarily impurities in the nasty sense, just mineral content.
Scotland and North-West England have excellent tap water. The water in the Midlands and London is perfectly safe to drink, but it certainly has a taste to it.
If you wish to taste some Finnish ones, I’m sure I can bottle and ship some of our tapwater for you guys to taste.
Severn Trent (the midlands) is often voted the best tap water in the UK.
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Not a water person, but it might be the fire departments fault. If they use a hydrant upstream of you it flows so much water so fast that it can stir up some older stuff that’s been sitting in there a while.
Ah interesting, could def see that happening.
I was in the industry for a decent amount of years. I know the operators of the water plants around me. I never hesitate to drink the tap water in my area. At home it goes through the filter in my fridge, which manages the runoff taste in the spring, and keeps the water cold.
I just wonder about PEX tubing. Occasionally, the water has a strong plasticky taste/smell like hose water and I feel like that just can’t be good for you.
Gotta get those excess micro plastics somehow
[people drinking out of lead pipes] 🗿
I live in Grand Rapids, MI where the tap water is 2.4 ppt PFAS. I buy reverse osmosis purified from the store for $0.50 a gallon for drinking, and will continue to do so until I get my own place where I’ll install an under-sink one
Just generally, you can get a report of your municipal water testing. The biggest safety variable that I would be worried about testing at home for is lead in the pipes between me and the treatment plant. That includes my house/building and the municipal pipes.
Now taste, that’s a to each their own situation. Sulfury water is my limit for sure. No thanks!
I live in SE Michigan, so… … …yeah, I want to trust my city water, but I can’t. Not since Flint, Michigan.
I’m in mid Michigan, and you’re fine. The circumstances that lead (ba-dum) to the issues in Flint are unlikely to occur elsewhere, particularly if you’re closer to Detroit.
I live in Monroe County.
Yeah, you’re fine. The issue with flint was because they moved away from the supply that you’re on.
they moved away from the supply that you’re on.
As in, that’s what they did before the massive catastrophe that was “everybody gets cancer in the everything”, to paraphrase, right?
Correct.
Flint was on the Detroit water supply, and then tried to save money by switching to one that the pipes couldn’t handle, which damaged the protective coating on the pipes and let lead leach into the water.
After the coating was damaged there was no real way to fix it that was better than “replace the pipes”, which was on the agenda anyway.Lead pipes are bad, but they’re typically safe enough that it’s not an emergency due to the coating. It’s a worldwide effort to replace lead pipes with other materials that’s usually happening roughly inline with the usual service replacement schedule, but some places are going faster because of public concern or just a good opportunity. (My local water supply got the budget to do it while doing a different project, so it took two or three times as long, but happened a few decades early and was much cheaper, then when Flint happened they looked great by being able to respond to questions by saying they started years ago and are almost done)
why trust or not? Just get it tested if you’re worried. Mentioned elsewhere in this thread, you can take a sample and send it out to find if everything is in safe levels. (Just remember all water is going to have impurity, the key words are safe levels)
Municipal drinking water is tested multiple times per day in Toronto, as it should be. Testing once and assuming the complex machinery and chemical levels are the same a week later is pure folly.
Note that this is different from testing well water, which shouldn’t change much. Testing well water once a year is a good idea though.
Oh for sure, I’m not worried at all, but if other people are I don’t see why they don’t just get it tested rather than buying hundreds of dollars in bottled water
How much does it generally cost to get it tested? I make very little money.
depending on how much want to do, I have seen kits for ~$30. Pretty sure I’ve seen some small kits taken for camping, so they can’t be too pricy. And if you can’t afford it, just start bringing it up around town! Maybe somebody will get excited and do it for you.
Thanks. :)
Probably less than you’d spend on bottled water over two or three months, worthwhile investment if tests show it’s drinkable.
I don’t buy bottled water. I buy gallon jugs that I then refill at a filling station. Where I’m at, the filling station is typically about 0.40 USD/gallon.
Still, I get your point. It would, of course, still be cheaper by far to use tap water.
Personally, I would trust those filling stations a whole lot less than my tap water. Tap water is constantly purified and being tested, and strictly regulated my multiple agencies, and the press is ready to jump on it the second it’s unsafe.
One of those filling stations? Well for one the water I’m 90% sure is the same tap water anyway, and for 2, do they produce reports every month showing how safe they are like our city water does?
Tap water is constantly purified
But unlike a lot of the filling station water, tap water is often not purified with UV or reverse osmosis. (I looked it up and mine isn’t anyway.) So some dangerous byproducts from mining and the like get through.
and the press is ready to jump on it the second it’s unsafe.
Honestly, this is an excellent point I hadn’t thought of.
One of those filling stations? Well for one the water I’m 90% sure is the same tap water anyway …
It is, I believe, but with UV & reverse-osmosis so it’s more strongly filtered than tap water in the end.
… and for 2, do they produce reports every month showing how safe they are like our city water does?
Fair point.
(Also, please be aware that I fully admit I am not knowledgeable on this stuff; I’m just trying my best. So, if I am spouting any misconceptions, I welcome correction as long as it is kindly done.)
Sounds like UV and reverse osmosis are better, but if your city is already purifying it’s probably overkill. From my very quick research it sounds like it’s a good option only if your local tapwater is currently failing, which honestly some american towns and cities are. In that case - go for it, but if you’re city is passing, then it sounds like you’re purifying already perfectly safe to drink water.
https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/home/reverse-osmosis-water-pros-cons/
Not expensive but it depends on what you want to test. Most of the available tests can be gotten from aquarium supply stores. Got to keep fish healthy after all. Others can be gotten from pool supply companies.
Thank you. :)
Get an undersink reverse osmosis and uv filter kit. Some come with a remineralizer so it doesn’t taste flat. Don’t go for a cheap one or it will leak. SoCal isn’t known for its water purity or consistancy.
