The Town of Odyssey

So, a recent situation came up that left me with the choice of drinking tap water or doing without coffee. Does anyone drink tap water these days? If not, why?

If the tap water is going to be heated or boiled then I will use it in soups, drinks, or any recipe calling for water. Otherwise I prefer to use our filtered water if not for the only reason that our tap water tastes disgusting. After I saw how much dirt and grossness out filters caught after only a few months I didn't want to drink tap water again without boiling it and hoping that kills any bad stuff. I really don't know too much about it though, so maybe it'd be perfectly fine to drink it and I'm just paranoid.

Theoretically, of course, distilled or boiled or filtered water is better. Our municipal water system loves disinfectants, and periodically it is so strong that you can smell it when it comes out of the tap. I'm not sure how effective our filter actually is against it (apparently they use chloramine, which is said to be hard to get rid of), but anecdotally it seems a little bit fresher.

Practically speaking, though, I have to admit there have been a number of times when I wanted water for some purpose right away, and I didn't want to wait. Unless you're filtering all of your water, you're going to end up getting exposed to it anyway, in bathing or washing water. Even if you did, if you use water anywhere outside of your house, it can be expected to have the same issue.

It's another one of those things in modern society that is probably dangerous, and, given time, will be revealed as a health hazard (like lead paint, car emissions or tobacco smoke), but that isn't going to change because the people who can do the most about it are in denial. Ultimately, I suspect you have to just carry on and expect that God's made your body resilient enough to put up with these kinds of conditions until your time is up.

I always drink tap water from home, but we have a well and a filter. I've never actually given any thought to not drinking tap water since I've always been lucky enough to live in a place with well water. If I'm going out, I do like to fill a bottle of water at home and take it with me. I definitely do not drink the tap water at work since it tends to turn brown after a heavy rain.

I would expect that bathing in water is not as bad as drinking said water, if one must be exposed to contaminants. I have been blessed to live in places with decent tap water, so I just drink tap water. Some of my friends, on the same nice water system, always drink water that has been filtered. I guess I don't think about the drinking water too much though; I have other concerns. If one gets too focused on something as trivial as water you're cutting out time that you could be spending on more productive things.

Most of The U.S. has decent water treatment facilities, it’s not going to hurt anyone for the most part, unless you’re in Flint I guess.

I know some people that will only drink filtered water, because pushing it through charcoal pellets is going to do something chlorine doesn’t? I guess?

I do use a Brita filter for my tap water because I prefer it that way for drinking water, but if I'm using water for cooking etc. I don't filter it first. The tap water is pretty good where I am. I grew up with well water, which was good too, though we still used a Brita filter with that water too. I don't worry about it that much.

EK wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 2:01 pmI know some people that will only drink filtered water, because pushing it through charcoal pellets is going to do something chlorine doesn’t? I guess?

Doesn't filtering it affect the taste, though?

We drink unfiltered well water at our house, but I guess that's safer in some places than others. My grandparents have a wheat farm 4 hours away from us(we listened to so much odyssey on trips back and forth over the years) and they treat and filter their water. When we'd go there for harvest in the summer, Grandpa would always warn us kids not to drink any of the irrigation water because someone he knew went blind after drinking irrigation water in that area.

My family used to buy drinking water here because we had a shallow well. Fortunately, by the time I was like 4, we had a deep well dug if I remember the story right. Shallow wells in my area tend to have disgusting orange-brown water because of a lot of iron content. Our old well had an old box-spring stuck in it(dad said it was there when he bought the place) and that was really weird.

A neighbor we used to have shared this crazy story about how he got his well back when he lived in Oregon. Basically the only well drilling company in his area at the time had a reputation for not finishing people's wells because the owner was on drugs. So after the first day drilling, my neighbor got out his rifle and told the people running the drilling machine, "I'll let you folks get back home to your families with your company pickup, but if you try leaving with the drill before my well is done, I'll shoot out it's(the drill's) tires!" So far as I know, the story's true. That neighbor had the true spirit of a crazy Idaho redneck long before he moved here to Idaho.

I was raised on tap water so I'm used to it. Maybe I've built up immunities. Although, when I go to other people's places, most of the time their tap water tastes funny to me and I don't like drinking it if it's an option.

Petrichor wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 2:46 pm

EK wrote: ↑Sat Feb 05, 2022 2:01 pmI know some people that will only drink filtered water, because pushing it through charcoal pellets is going to do something chlorine doesn’t? I guess?

Doesn't filtering it affect the taste, though?

You’re not wrong, if you have enough free chlorine hanging around in your water it can knock out that weird pool taste. Around my parts they’re pretty good about their water treatment procedures so it doesn’t impact us much.

I prefer not to drink our tap water, it does tend to smell of chlorine a bit too much for my taste. Back when I lived in VA, we had a well and a whole house sediment filter, so we just all drank straight from the tap and it tasted fine.

My in-laws have well water, and that stuff is absolutely fantastic. It's always cold. It always tastes good.

Anyway, I live in the suburbs and am extremely poor, so I drink tap water and it's just okay! Our tap water is actually pretty decent. Doesn't taste like much- which is kind of what I want out of water.

They make this sweet carbonated stuff in cans now that pretty much eliminates the need for water.

But yeah I've always drank tap water with no incident. >_> Probably depends where you live, though.