07-28-2007, 04:41 PM
[quote davester]This is not to say that ALL municipal water is of higher quality than bottled water, and there have been some significant issues with some small and poorly regulated local supplies in the US, but it is pretty rare to have unsafe municipal drinking water sources.
I was at one place where I was advised not to drink the tap water. It was okay to shower in, but that's it. The reason being that the water supply came from a cistern that had no quality checks and hadn't been looked at in over a year. The contents largely came from rain water off the roof of the building.
I was at another place where the water upstream was considered so high risk, that swimming wasn't even allowed. So the taps that were fed by the same water were also off-limits.
I've been to hotels where I found out certain parts of the building had plumbing problems which contaminated the tap water.
Sure if you go to a medium or large city, the supply the send out is probably okay. But just because the original supply is safe doesn't mean what comes out of the tap is. You can be in a city and not be getting city water.
Edit: I tried to find the version of this sign like I was seeing, but can't. The ones I saw were brown with white markings. A cup with water in it, and a circle with a line through it. It's tap water, but it's not safe to drink.
When the only taps around that have water have signs like that, the only option is bottled water.
I was at one place where I was advised not to drink the tap water. It was okay to shower in, but that's it. The reason being that the water supply came from a cistern that had no quality checks and hadn't been looked at in over a year. The contents largely came from rain water off the roof of the building.
I was at another place where the water upstream was considered so high risk, that swimming wasn't even allowed. So the taps that were fed by the same water were also off-limits.
I've been to hotels where I found out certain parts of the building had plumbing problems which contaminated the tap water.
Sure if you go to a medium or large city, the supply the send out is probably okay. But just because the original supply is safe doesn't mean what comes out of the tap is. You can be in a city and not be getting city water.
Edit: I tried to find the version of this sign like I was seeing, but can't. The ones I saw were brown with white markings. A cup with water in it, and a circle with a line through it. It's tap water, but it's not safe to drink.
When the only taps around that have water have signs like that, the only option is bottled water.