is my tap water safe to drink?

[Speed Weed]

2 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

*slips diethylmercury into water*

 

How much you want to bet?

As far as I know, it is safe to drink water if you boiling it first. 

[vanished]

6 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

If the boiling point of any impurities are similar to water, distillation alone will not work to remove them.

I know but we're talking about lead here... not exactly similar

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, DaPhuc said:

As far as I know, it is safe to drink water if you boiling it first. 

that only kills (And maybe not even) the things living in it.  No actual material is removed (except perhaps for some of the water itself, and maybe some light stuff like alcohol if for some reason that was in there).  To purify it you have to separate it from the impurities some how, not just take the whole bulk of material through a heating process.

[spartaman64]

3 minutes ago, DaPhuc said:

As far as I know, it is safe to drink water if you boiling it first. 

boiling only helps to kill bacteria. it doesnt help with stuff like heavy metals in the water

[Speed Weed]

3 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

that only kills (And maybe not even) the things living in it.  No actual material is removed (except perhaps for some of the water itself, and maybe some light stuff like alcohol if for some reason that was in there).  To purify it you have to separate it from the impurities some how, not just take the whole bulk of material through a heating process.

OOoooooo

 

3 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

boiling only helps to kill bacteria. it doesnt help with stuff like heavy metals in the water

I ain't no scientist so I don't know what the hell is diethylmercury. All I know is boiling the water then drinking it afterward. If I die from it, I guess bad luck find me, 

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, DaPhuc said:

OOoooooo

 

I ain't no scientist so I don't know what the hell is diethylmercury. All I know is boiling the water then drinking it afterward. If I die from it, I guess bad luck find me, 

Adding an organic "tail" to mercury (methyl, or ethyl, etc.) tends to help it absorb into organisms far more readily, which increases the ease with which you will get mercury poisoning from it

[Speed Weed]

2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Adding an organic "tail" to mercury (methyl, or ethyl, etc.) tends to help it absorb into organisms far more readily, which increases the ease with which you will get mercury poisoning from it

I guess I will take your word for it. 

[Razor Blade]

I'm not sure why people are so obsessed with pure water anyway...If you purify water enough... drinking it will actually be bad for you.

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, DaPhuc said:

I guess I will take your word for it. 

The wonder of the internet is that you don't have to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylmercury

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata,_Kumamoto#Minamata_environmental_disaster

[spartaman64]

2 minutes ago, Razor Blade said:

I'm not sure why people are so obsessed with pure water anyway...If you purify water enough... drinking it will actually be bad for you.

im not sure about that

[TetraSky]

22 minutes ago, fpo said:

I typically drink juice, milk & alcohol. Soda is kinda gross to me now. 

If any of those is produced "locally", chances are they also contain trace amount of lead.

In any case, anything below 15 ppb is considered "safe".

Of course, 0 ppb would be better, but people in the past were too busy sniffing lead paint/lead gas and various other lead "enhanced" crap to realize that putting lead pipe in the ground for fresh water wasn't a good idea.

As such, until your city goes around and replaces ALL lead pipes, you'll have lead in your tap water.

 

I'd recommend just getting a water filter if you're that worried, but it's really not super harmful at those levels, just make sure to always leave the faucet open for a minute or two, so that all lead particles suspended in your pipes are expelled from them before drinking it.

You can read this for more information on the subject
https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm

(Do take notes that a water filter will also get rid of all minerals in the water, which is what gives the water its taste...)

[vanished]

1 minute ago, spartaman64 said:

im not sure about that

I don't think it's actually bad for you but it would lack the minerals that you need, so it would be worse for you than "normal" water

[Speed Weed]

8 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I don't think it's actually bad for you but it would lack the minerals that you need, so it would be worse for you than "normal" water

Is it bad to drink Nestle Pure Life Purified Water with Mineral enhance for taste? https://www.amazon.com/Nestle-Pure-Life-Purified-Plastic/dp/B00NP79AI8/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

[captain_to_fire]

12 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Hmmmm well lead sulphate certainly doesn't

I think heavy metals are removed at the tertiary wastewater treatment. 

 

 

*

 

[vanished]

11 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

I think heavy metals are removed at the tertiary wastewater treatment.

Tertiary is generally just sterilization, like baking under UV.  Some places don't even do it.  I'm pretty sure they get rid of heavy metals and other ions before that.

13 minutes ago, DaPhuc said:

Is it bad to drink Nestle Pure Life Purified Water with Mineral enhance for taste? https://www.amazon.com/Nestle-Pure-Life-Purified-Plastic/dp/B00NP79AI8/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Only because it will cause the unnecessary production of extra plastic bottles

[Razor Blade]

16 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

im not sure about that

Completely pure water will remove minerals and electrolytes from your body. 

 

[Andreas Lilja]

7 hours ago, wasab said:

If you reside in a first world country, probably. If you are in third world, DONT DRINK TAP WATER

USA has so much wealth inequality that you could argue some states are third world.

[Guest]

@TetraSky is it always measured in part per billion? My town is only 3 for lead as of 2015. 

Spoiler

 

[IAnthonyFX]

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=Flint+Michigan+Water+Crisis&FORM=FRESET

 

I don't trust Water Treatment workers to do anything 

hold on..... that is not to blame to the workers themselves, the water may be perfectly fine when it leaves the treatment plant but it gets contaminated with led pipes. Sometimes it can get worse with fosil fuels finding its way to drinking water when fracking operation occurs. 

[Razor Blade]

15 minutes ago, Raskolnikov said:

USA has so much wealth inequality that you could argue some states are third world.

That doesn't even make sense. The economy of the state doesn't make the water unsafe. Even the lowest income state in 2016 poll data according to investopedia is Mississippi with an average income of $39,680 last time I checked, the water was safe to drink there too.

[IAnthonyFX]

39 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

im not sure about that

yes it can ^^! hypotonic fluids can make your cells explote. and that is no fun at all, we are talking deonized water level of purity which is fairly easy to do

[captain_to_fire]

5 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Tertiary is generally just sterilization, like baking under UV.  Some places don't even do it.  I'm pretty sure they get rid of heavy metals and other ions before that.

Tertiary treatment is more than just UV sterilization:

Quote

"Tertiary wastewater treatment is any physiochemical or biological process employing bioreactors, precipitation, filtration, or chlorination procedures similar to those employed for drinking water purification. Tertiary treatment sharply reduces levels of inorganic nutrients, especially phosphate, nitrite, and nitrate from the final effluent.

 

Wastewater receiving tertiary treatment essentially contains no nutrients and cannot support extensive microbial growth. Tertiary treatment is the most complete method of treating sewage but has not been widely adopted due to costs associated with such complete nutrient removal."

 

-Madigan, M. T., Martinko, J. M., Stahl, D. A., & Clark, D. P. (2012). Chapter 35, Wastewater Treatment, Water Purification, and Waterborne Microbial Disease. In Brock Biology of Microorganisms (13th ed., p. 1010). San Francisco, CA: Pearson Education.

I can't speak for US and Canada but most of our faucet water is just until secondary treatment and mass tertiary treatment is just expensive. We often buy our drinking water that underwent tertiary treatment (scaled down) in 5 gallon containers like this one and have it delivered to our houses. 

 

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

Tertiary treatment is more than just UV sterilization:

I can't speak for US and Canada but most of our faucet water is just until secondary treatment and mass tertiary treatment is just expensive. We often buy our drinking water that underwent tertiary treatment (scaled down) in 5 gallon containers like this one and have it delivered to our houses.

Yeah it can be other things, I shouldn't have generalized like that, but I do know that's a common one.

[Speed Weed]

3 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

Tertiary treatment is more than just UV sterilization:

I can't speak for US and Canada but most of our faucet water is just until secondary treatment and mass tertiary treatment is just expensive. We often buy our drinking water that underwent tertiary treatment (scaled down) in 5 gallon containers like this one and have it delivered to our houses. 

 

My parent has one of those. Is it bad or good?

[captain_to_fire]

1 minute ago, DaPhuc said:

My parent has one of those. Is it bad or good?

Depending who's selling the water and their equipment and if they passed sanitary certification from authorities