Asklemmy

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

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.

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 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.

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

Canada here - tap water is just fine, I filter it at home since I prefer the taste but I've never been adverse to drinking it straight

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Depends on how acclimated your stomach is. Locals may be able to drink without problem but foreigners may have stomach problems.

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.

In Brazil we usually haver ceramic filters attached to our faucets, so we drink water from there.

We filter our tap water here in Korea. Most people do, but as I understand, it's safe to drink it just straight from the tap. It's just better through a machine that gets rid of any lingering chlorine and heats it or chills it for you.

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!

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..

I'm from 🇵🇭, particularly Davao City (southern part of the country).

Tap water is drinkable here although there are water bottles available.

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

Norway = Yes. But the fresh water pipes are in the same trench as the sewer pipes, and being 100 years old, the clean water depends on the pressure. This is in Oslo btw..

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.

Australian here, I grew up drinking tap water without boiling it but since I married my wife who is Chinese, I must drink it after it was boiled. It's good for the healthy.

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.

Moscow, Russia. You can usually drink tap water in Moscow, but it's something unusually good for Russian bigger cities in general, and it's considered a good thing to boil it. Actually depends on local specifics and where the water comes from.

From Singapore. Tap water here is potable but we boil it first out of habit. (But I use tap water for drinking when boiled water has run out).

No, I never drank unfiltered tap water. I have always lived in areas with poor-tasting tap water. It's not necessarily dangerous, but has a high calcium content and isn't the cleanest either.

As a kid, we had a carbon filter on our refrigerator, and that was good enough. When I moved out of my parents house, I started getting those 5 gallon bottles and would refill them at the grocery store.

I eventually got my own refrigerator that had a carbon filter, but I couldn't really go back to a carbon filter once I got used to water filtered by a RO system. It just didn't taste very good. So about a month ago I installed a RO filter under my sink, and now I don't need to drag my bottles to the store anymore. Best of both worlds!

As long as you don't live in Flint, USA water is generally safe to drink from the tap.

Generally in the west (US/Canada, and most of Europe) tap water is safe to drink. I've been to Iceland and don't remember tap water being a concern. This is something you should double check before every trip though. A good rule of thumb is just going by how developed/rich the country is that you are visiting, with more developed countries usually having potable tap water but this is not a guarantee. (And some countries are far too large and diverse to apply this rule efficiently)

Also asking the locals is not necessarily a good idea either as there immune system might be accustomed to the different bacteria and pollutants in the water. For example drinking tap water in some places in the Middle-East might not be an issue for the locals but as I haven't grown up there I probably wouldn't risk drinking tap if I can avoid it, not to ruin the trip with getting sick.

TLDR: check with your country's official travel recommendations

Edit: someone mentioned bottleded water just being bottled tap water. While this is not uncommon in Europe (not sure about the rest of the world), the water does go through extra steps of filtering and cleaning meaning it might be a bit safer to foreigners.

In Argentina, generally you can drink straight from the tap.

In Malaysia, the water is advertised as safe to drink. Large majority however, either boils it or uses their own water filters.