The water company here says that it's unfair to compare the tap water with bottled mineral water; the tap water is substantially better.
(I had a tour of the plant. They are a serious group of overachievers. The source of the water is mostly the local lake, and is purified by, two grades of sand filter, activated charcoal, ozone purification, and a bacterial bed. They actively manage the biofilms in the water pipes; the water itself is so clean that chlorination is unnecessary. They also actively manage the local aquifers so that the underground water flow near any industrial site flows away from their collection wells. There are two separate distribution networks, one for emergencies, plus a warehouse full of bagged water ready for distribution. And, best of all, it tastes great.)
I wouldn't recommend calling them German. :)
'The official language of Zürich is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German...' [1]
Northern Switzerland was founded by Germanic tribes, after all.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Switzerland#Germa...
The term is not restricted to only refer to modern Germany (which didn't even exist as a unified state until the late 19th century).
I definitely don't trust the municipal water sources + local plumbing my landlords provide to be of the highest quality. I'd like to measure what actually comes out of my taps but I'm not aware of a lab which would affordable do contaminant level testing for just a few samples.
- ancient Victorian infrastructure means that there are leaks. They're terrified of contaminated water getting into the system, so they crank the pressure up, to ensure that any leaks happen outwards. This, of course, makes the leaks worse.
- even so, the water has to be chlorinated, and in some areas, quite heavily. You will never forget the first time you turn on a tap and get gassed.
- some really old houses still have lead pipes. I was taught as a child that if I wanted to drink water, I should let the water run until it went cold before filling a glass.
- some not-so-old houses still have a low-pressure water system which runs things like hot water, bathroom taps, etc. Traditionally these run off a tank in the loft, filled from the mains. This tank is frequently unsealed, and so fills up with sludge, moths, dead rats, etc. Even today, do not drink water from the hot tap unless it's obviously at mains pressure (which means it's connected to the mains via a sealed high-pressure water tank or a heat exchanger). (The reason for this is to enforce a vertical drop between the water mains and the house system, so that if the pressure ever falls in the water mains, there's no risk of sucking contaminated water back up the pipe. In such houses, there is a single source of potable water, which is the cold tap in the kitchen.)
- even then the water out of some of the aquifers is so hard as to be nigh undrinkable. Soap works markedly better in Scotland than it does in south-east England, and if you go to Cambridge you might as well not wash.
Of course, a lot of this is now being fixed, although slowly and painfully --- I think lead pipes are now no longer a thing. But it really makes me appreciate how good the water is in Zürich.
Where really old means "built before 1970".
>I think lead pipes are now no longer a thing.
There's been a lot of work to get rid of all the lead pipes, but there are still plenty around. Also, DIYers sometimes use the wrong, lead-based, solder for water pipe.
...because you can't connect the hot water and cold water systems together (because of aforesaid risk of sucking contaminated water out of the hot system into the cold system).
Or a backflow preventer - they are the law in many states. Put one on the hot and cold side.
After treatment, the water flows through a glass tank with some daphnia in it (water fleas). These are watched with a video camera and motion analysis done by computer.
Apparently, they aren't just able to detect impurities by detecting differences in the way the daphnia move, they are capable of detecting individual compounds because they affect the daphnia differently...
> this 'hydration' ritual you are theorizing.
You are lucky not to have encountered the whole "hydration" fetish. It's especially bad with kids (apparently they are so busy having fun they don't notice when they are thirsty -- and this has apparently only recently developed??) and spread via parents into the workplace. part of the pathology of helicopter parenting.
But for places with old water lines and all kinds of junk in the water it can make good sense to use bottled water for consumption.
n.b. Germany has some of the strictest regulations and accordingly the tap water is of excellent quality - everywhere.
Examples:
- Munich https://www.swm.de/privatkunden/m-wasser/qualitaet.html (the 1st PDF link)
- Nuremberg https://www.n-ergie.de/privatkunden/produkte/wasser/analysew... (click on the map, starts an interactive map, Flash unfortunately, from which the values for the four different areas they provide water for are available)
- Berlin http://www.bwb.de/content/language1/html/3255.php
I knew a woman who was a water engineer at the local waterworks. She drank nothing but tap water. You can trust a product when the engineers that made it use it.
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On the other hand, I spent some time in Russia and in Ukraine. I don't remember all the places any more, but I think the worst was in Odessa, Ukraine - an incredibly beautiful city that I fervently recommend visiting (even for someone who used to live in the Presidio in San Francisco) - where I would not even brush my teeth with the water. I had tried to use it to prepare pasta, the result was disgusting. Those pasta went into the trash.
From a German point of view (chlorine tastes and smells horrible) this is just ridiculous.
If one has a good pipe system, the ozonated water is fine. If there's any worry, though, chlorinated is safer. I'm not surprised that a military base would choose the safer alternative: no-one ever got fired for ensuring that the water is safe to drink.
From 10 minutes of research it looks like SF is lead-free for water mains, but this talks about how fixtures even up until 2010 potentially contain unsafe levels of lead: http://www.bayarealeaddetectors.com/blog/
And this is just one contaminant: http://www.livescience.com/56210-what-is-chromium-6-in-tap-w...
https://www.epa.gov/ccl/types-drinking-water-contaminants // https://www.wqa.org/learn-about-water/common-contaminants
While I personally don't buy bottled water (lucky enough to have RO filtration at home and at work), I don't really blame those who do out of fear. Unless you get what's coming out of the actual taps you use tested regularly, you don't actually know what you're drinking.
I can understand wanting bottled water in London where tap tastes terrible, being 80% limestone, but for the rest of the UK bottled is a pointless waste of money.
There's a water hardness map for England (PDF): http://www.dwi.gov.uk/consumers/advice-leaflets/hardness_map...
(But you should go to Manchester anyway.)
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/aquafina-source-tap-water/sto...
The previous use of the surface site doesn't necessarily make the aquifer unusable. It would be much more damning if their water was tested and found to have higher than normal levels of volatile organic compounds or whatever.
Yes, the paint factory was a superfund site. So this wasn't the "it's just tap water" story, it turned out to be an actual public health issue.