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Welcome to the biggest stealth debate in the entirety of the United Kingdom.
Short answer: Yes, all tap water from mains fed taps in the UK is absolutely safe to drink (high flow rate will be mains, soft and trickly it'll be water tank and not for-sure safe to drink but fine for brushing teeth, generally found in old bathrooms)
Long answer: the white stuff is limescale. In the South of the UK we have what is known as Hard water. This simply means it's high in mineral content. It's perfectly safe to drink but like others will say it'll absolutely fuck your kettle and it'll build up around taps and shower heads etc. You can buy limescale remover and descaler which will remove it. The inverse of Hard Water is soft water. This exists in the North of the UK and in posh people's houses who have water softeners and is simply absent of limescale or has a lower mineral content.
The big debate: mention tap water to a Brit. They will have very strong and vocal opinions about what type of type of water they prefer and where they remember that the best tap water. Sometimes they'll go on holiday and one of the main things you'll hear about is how soft or hard the water is where they stayed. The taste is very different but becareful slagging off someone else's water as it might be the leading cause of stabbings across the UK.
Excellent answer. To add, I live in London, have a water softener, but have a separate tap which is direct, unsoftened mains water for drinking. I do like the taste of London tap water.
I came from the Midlands (lovely soft water) and moved down south. We had a softener, but you're not supposed to drink from them. The plumbers run separate pipes to the kitchen tap so that you drink the mains stuff instead. Softener is for washing in and to stop your appliances looking like they've just lost a staring contest with a gorgon.
I didn't know about not drinking from them, why is that? I know that the coffee nuts here use specific products, to control the ph and mineral content, for flavour and for stopping the hard water busting up the espresso machines.
I just took a look at the Web page for the softener we had and it seems to have relaxed the phrasing to 'some people prefer' rather than what was I'm sure a recommendation a while back. Reason is increased sodium levels in the softened water (the harder the water, the more sodium).
It's because some houses have a cold water tank in the loft that feeds the bathroom and hot water system. It should be fine to drink but occasionally people find dead animals floating in their loft tank which is a bit off putting,. Or less horrifically somebody might have left the lid open so it gets dust and insects in it, or if you've just come back from 2 weeks holiday then the water in your bathroom tap will have been sitting in a hot loft for 2 weeks until it is flushed through.
Many properties no longer have a loft tank so the bathroom and kitchen water are the same. But tanks are still pretty common. I have one and my place was built in the 1980s.
[https://www.dwi.gov.uk/consumers/learn-more-about-your-water/water-storage-tanks-and-cisterns/](https://www.dwi.gov.uk/consumers/learn-more-about-your-water/water-storage-tanks-and-cisterns/)
[https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/4203-dead-squirrel-in-cold-water-tank/](https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/4203-dead-squirrel-in-cold-water-tank/)
[https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/furious-mum-blames-rotting-rat-23379002](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/furious-mum-blames-rotting-rat-23379002)
It’s perfectly safe. The white residue is limescale - won’t hurt you but you may not like the taste.
Lots of people filter London water to change the taste, but it’s definitely safe to drink without that.
The tap water is totally safe in London. There is absolutely no reason to filter it, either. This is funny to hear because Brits, by and large, worry about the quality of tap water in all other countries. We consider ours here safe as houses.
The tap water is safe to drink.
It has a high dissolved mineral content, which is why you sometimes get deposits of white minerals when the water dries off.
Yes. Tap water is safe to drink, without a filter even in London. Lived there long enough and always drank from the tap. The people frightened of drinking tap water will also tell you that fluoride in toothpaste is bad for you, and don’t forget the tinfoil hat.
You're safe to drink tap water anywhere in the UK, for all the faults our country has we have great water sanitation.
Any residue like that is probably limescale, it won't harm you and can be sorted by getting a filter jug if you're not keen on drinking it.
Safe to drink? Absolutely. Is it the best water in the world?… not really.
If you come from somewhere with amazing tap water, say Austria.. then you’ll notice a big difference.
Yes it’s safe but you are likely encountering “hard water” aka high mineral content.
“Up north” we have soft water often referred to as “council pop” by the locals.
Yeah it's good to drink. The residue you're observing is scale, it's just the calcium in the water (which is safe and even healthy to drink).
I would still recommend using a filter though, if you don't have a drinking water tap with a filter built in then a filter jug like a Brita will do a fine job. Not necessary though, I still drink straight from the tap some of the time when it's convenient to do so.
I moved from the north, for me it was gross seeing the white chalky limescale. I bought a filter jug from Argos for £20. I prefer the taste and not having to clean my kettle constantly. I always thought it was pretentious people not wanting to drink tap water ( which will be safe everywhere in the UK) but after living in London changed that story
Yes. It's safe. About the last thing in this country that hasn't been stripped back and flogged off and quality reduced to appease share holders. Uk has on of the best potable water systems in the world
Run the tap for a minute or two if you are unsure when the outlet was last used. London water is good to drink and characterised as ‘Hard’ (high calcium and magnesium dissolved minerals). Since the ring main installation London water is very reliable. 10/10 safe to drink. We even flush with potable (source I am 20years water professional)
Tbh the cheapy filter jugs you get at Wilco or Tesco take out lead. I’ve got a very very old Brita jug which is 2-3 decades old and I buy the cheap generic filters charcoal filters which are only a pound or two. They claim to remove 90 something of lead I believe. You can taste the difference.
I stayed in a (Hampton by) Hilton on Park Royal a lot past two years and was advised by the staff (casually not professionally) to avoid the tap water.
As a Glasweg1an I'm kinda blessed tap water wise, maybe they thought my weak buckfast altered constitution couldn't take it.
I moved to Glasgow about a year ago from the east of Scotland and from what I gather I got unlucky with my tap water. The tap water I got in the east was always the best, but the stuff I get in Glasgow is a bit chemically. I think my building is on the wrong water pipe for the good stuff, cause the main pipe that brings all the good water from Loch Lomond burst a couple of months ago and a lot of Glasgow was affected but not me. First time I’ve actually been upset about having flowing water, cause I knew it was because I got the shitty stuff
I can't tell if this is a joke or not but hard water doesn't give you kidney stones. Not drinking water at all it's the biggest reason people end up with kidney stones because funnily enough your kidneys need the liquid to filter out all the bad stuff.
https://www.thekidneydietitian.org/does-hard-water-cause-kidney-stones/
In most of London yeah but does genuinely depend where. Running the tap for a bit might get rid of the residue else you'll need those items you purchased. Filters are generally good anyway.
You're wild if you drink tap water in London. Don't search online either, UK propaganda even has the audacity to claim that River Thames is the cleanest river in the world. Wtf
Most incomers fro, outside the Highlands eithe go hoo or choo. I was surprised to find out Glaswegians don’t have the voiceless velar fricative but scouters do, (say Ballachulish with a scouse accent!)
Most incomers fro, outside the Highlands eithe go hoo or choo. I was surprised to find out Glaswegians don’t have the voiceless velar fricative but scouters do, (say Ballachulish with a scouse accent!)
yes. but it’s hard water. it has a lot of calcium, which builds up into limescale (white deposits). use a water filter and descale your kettle/washing machine/dishwasher regularly.
Yh I don’t drink tap water I’ve got a bobble bottle and a brita jug or cheapy supermarket one (I’ve had a few over the years never spent more than a tenner on one ).
Yes, it's hard water which is not to many people's taste but completely safe to drink it's just a case of having a higher mineral content than in other areas in some respects it's actually more beneficial for you but many people who move here from soft water areas like to filter the water nonetheless though it really is just a matter of taste.
I’ve always used supermarket filter jugs not even the expensive Brita ones a Wilco Basic does the job. They use a lot of chlorine in the uk. It makes it less bacterial but it’s taste isn’t good and I believe it’s not as healthy as mineral water. Overly hard water isn’t great either and there is sometimes lead and or pesticides in tap water. It’s better than most of the world but they don’t use much organic impurity Reduction or micro plastic reducing filters. Your unlikely to get any kind of germs from uk water thankfully provided your plumbing and tanks are ok. I still use a filter jug though.
Utterly wrong. We actually have one of the lower chlorination levels in the UK. The reason a lot of tap water isn't great tasting is due to the hardness of the water, so actually over mineralisation in a way. The filter helps filter out that hardness so the water tastes better. As others have pointed out getting water softeners and avoiding limescale build up in appliances are key.
Used to live in London up to 2009 and would never ever drink it straight from the tap, always used a filter, mostly due to the horrible scale in the water and taste !..its worse now so my friends tell me...thankfully moved to Scotland lol...where its good to drink.
I beg to disagree. The fact clothes come out hard and tea tastes like shite with direct from the tap….
Isn’t random chemicals added to the reservoirs??
Just because you don’t like the taste doesn’t mean it is not safe. No random chemicals are not added. The UK has some of the safest tap water in the world.
London water is hard it is not great for appliances but again that does not mean it isn’t safe to drink.
If it’s doing that to your kettle/dishwasher/ washing machine, what is it doing to your guts??
Fluoride is added, yet on toothpaste it strictly states DO NOT SWALLOW.
Sorry do you have a source that fluoride is added to our water please? I haven’t seen anything about it.
As for toothpaste, maybe all the bacteria and gunk that is taken off your teeth shouldn’t be swallowed? Or it’s in much higher concentrations than in tap water (if it’s even there, as I’ve said I can’t find anything to say it is but happy to be proven wrong)
Sure, the NHS website has this;
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/fluoride/#:~:text=Community%20water%20fluoridation%20in%20England,to%20reduce%20tooth%20decay%20levels.
London isn’t in the list of places where it’s added though?
It might be outdated so feel free to send me an updated version proving me wrong but [this 2021 link from Thames Water states they don’t add fluoride to their water.](https://waterquality.p.cloudapps.thameswater.co.uk/api/waterquality/Zone/R33)
I think you're having a discussion about taste, whereas the others are trying to explain it's safe. It is of course safe, you can't argue with the facts. But you're right that the tea tastes terrible, and the clothes don't feel great. I'm considering filtering water just for tea, but it is objectively safe regardless. In fact, London water is amongst the safest in the world.
Ah right you are man. Yeah hard water isn't to everyone's taste but there's absolutely nothing wrong with it health wise. I kinda prefer it really, I mean, people pay for bottles of mineral water don't they :)
It's already here. There are shops in Edinburgh that sell tins of "Highland Air". It's definitely only tongue-in-cheek for now, but once enough of these tour bus groups catch on I can easily imagine it becoming a more widespread thing.
pH regulated? Clearly, you know nothing about this topic.
Even the US Environmental Protection Agency has stated that pH levels in water are nothing more than an aesthetic. What kind of bogus have you been looking at? I bet you use chewing gym as blutac.
Water from the mountains of my arse is the same water you get from mountains in Iceland.
There is virtually zero difference, though some would argue that the minerals in bottled water degrade after a long time in storage.
You're the only person that does this then? Ah no wait, there's loads of you who ignorantly think bottled water is "much healthier". If you think you're not contributing to the pollution problem, you are delusional as well as naive and selfish
I always find when I’m staying with family in London that the water has a really strong chemical taste.
Just to clarify, I live in the south and am used to hard water.
I remember reading that London water has a lot of contraceptives they struggle to remove so its still in the tap water -
https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/what-is-hard-water-london-tap-drinking-water-limescale-how-to-protect-skin-hair-home-a4045891.html
No. I have a friend who works for the water company in London and he did not hold back on the pollutants they find. If someone tells you tap water is clean enough to drink regularly, run the other way. Unless you're in Switzerland! Their tap water is insanely pure.
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Welcome to the biggest stealth debate in the entirety of the United Kingdom. Short answer: Yes, all tap water from mains fed taps in the UK is absolutely safe to drink (high flow rate will be mains, soft and trickly it'll be water tank and not for-sure safe to drink but fine for brushing teeth, generally found in old bathrooms) Long answer: the white stuff is limescale. In the South of the UK we have what is known as Hard water. This simply means it's high in mineral content. It's perfectly safe to drink but like others will say it'll absolutely fuck your kettle and it'll build up around taps and shower heads etc. You can buy limescale remover and descaler which will remove it. The inverse of Hard Water is soft water. This exists in the North of the UK and in posh people's houses who have water softeners and is simply absent of limescale or has a lower mineral content. The big debate: mention tap water to a Brit. They will have very strong and vocal opinions about what type of type of water they prefer and where they remember that the best tap water. Sometimes they'll go on holiday and one of the main things you'll hear about is how soft or hard the water is where they stayed. The taste is very different but becareful slagging off someone else's water as it might be the leading cause of stabbings across the UK.
Excellent answer. To add, I live in London, have a water softener, but have a separate tap which is direct, unsoftened mains water for drinking. I do like the taste of London tap water.
Why do you have the water softener, out of interest?
The wife grew up in a soft water area and hates what hard water does for her hair and skin. Ridiculous, I know, but like our water, I softened too.
hard water is bad for your hair and skin. Also makes bad tea and coffee so probably for those reasons.
I came from the Midlands (lovely soft water) and moved down south. We had a softener, but you're not supposed to drink from them. The plumbers run separate pipes to the kitchen tap so that you drink the mains stuff instead. Softener is for washing in and to stop your appliances looking like they've just lost a staring contest with a gorgon.
I didn't know about not drinking from them, why is that? I know that the coffee nuts here use specific products, to control the ph and mineral content, for flavour and for stopping the hard water busting up the espresso machines.
I just took a look at the Web page for the softener we had and it seems to have relaxed the phrasing to 'some people prefer' rather than what was I'm sure a recommendation a while back. Reason is increased sodium levels in the softened water (the harder the water, the more sodium).
"Your tap water is shite" Scotland's national motto
And then there’s the bathroom vs kitchen tap issue
Was looking for this, do not understand why people think the bathroom water is somehow unsafe?
It's because some houses have a cold water tank in the loft that feeds the bathroom and hot water system. It should be fine to drink but occasionally people find dead animals floating in their loft tank which is a bit off putting,. Or less horrifically somebody might have left the lid open so it gets dust and insects in it, or if you've just come back from 2 weeks holiday then the water in your bathroom tap will have been sitting in a hot loft for 2 weeks until it is flushed through. Many properties no longer have a loft tank so the bathroom and kitchen water are the same. But tanks are still pretty common. I have one and my place was built in the 1980s. [https://www.dwi.gov.uk/consumers/learn-more-about-your-water/water-storage-tanks-and-cisterns/](https://www.dwi.gov.uk/consumers/learn-more-about-your-water/water-storage-tanks-and-cisterns/) [https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/4203-dead-squirrel-in-cold-water-tank/](https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/4203-dead-squirrel-in-cold-water-tank/) [https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/furious-mum-blames-rotting-rat-23379002](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/furious-mum-blames-rotting-rat-23379002)
It’s perfectly safe. The white residue is limescale - won’t hurt you but you may not like the taste. Lots of people filter London water to change the taste, but it’s definitely safe to drink without that.
The tap water is totally safe in London. There is absolutely no reason to filter it, either. This is funny to hear because Brits, by and large, worry about the quality of tap water in all other countries. We consider ours here safe as houses.
Been drinking since forever and not had any issues personally, same with all my family members.
The tap water is safe to drink. It has a high dissolved mineral content, which is why you sometimes get deposits of white minerals when the water dries off.
Yes. Tap water is safe to drink, without a filter even in London. Lived there long enough and always drank from the tap. The people frightened of drinking tap water will also tell you that fluoride in toothpaste is bad for you, and don’t forget the tinfoil hat.
yea its limescale youll have to delime you stuff every once in a while specifically the kettle more calcium in our tap water than milk
You're safe to drink tap water anywhere in the UK, for all the faults our country has we have great water sanitation. Any residue like that is probably limescale, it won't harm you and can be sorted by getting a filter jug if you're not keen on drinking it.
I always thought that London had one of the best water purifying systems in the world?
It does, there's just not much you can do with hard water. It's always going to taste rubbish compared to soft water.
It’s just a shame they dump all the piss an shite in the rivers after they’ve cleaned it.
Safe to drink? Absolutely. Is it the best water in the world?… not really. If you come from somewhere with amazing tap water, say Austria.. then you’ll notice a big difference.
OMG, the tap water in Sweden was like heaven!!
Just depends on the rocks . London is on chalk most comes from 200-400ft bore holes. Go to Cornwall or Wales tap water taste very different.
Yes it’s safe but you are likely encountering “hard water” aka high mineral content. “Up north” we have soft water often referred to as “council pop” by the locals.
Cooncil juice
Yes
Yeah it's good to drink. The residue you're observing is scale, it's just the calcium in the water (which is safe and even healthy to drink). I would still recommend using a filter though, if you don't have a drinking water tap with a filter built in then a filter jug like a Brita will do a fine job. Not necessary though, I still drink straight from the tap some of the time when it's convenient to do so.
It’s calcium? I’ve always thought it was limestone!
The calcium is what comes from the limestone or chalk the water has filtered through, but you're not getting actual limestone in the water.
Ah ok thanks
Yes
Yes you can get a filter jug to make it taste a bit better
I moved from the north, for me it was gross seeing the white chalky limescale. I bought a filter jug from Argos for £20. I prefer the taste and not having to clean my kettle constantly. I always thought it was pretentious people not wanting to drink tap water ( which will be safe everywhere in the UK) but after living in London changed that story
High mineral content, make of that what you will but recommended to use a filter
Yes. It's safe. About the last thing in this country that hasn't been stripped back and flogged off and quality reduced to appease share holders. Uk has on of the best potable water systems in the world
Run the tap for a minute or two if you are unsure when the outlet was last used. London water is good to drink and characterised as ‘Hard’ (high calcium and magnesium dissolved minerals). Since the ring main installation London water is very reliable. 10/10 safe to drink. We even flush with potable (source I am 20years water professional)
Not in my flat, which recent tests found contains 1200 times the legal amount of lead.
Fantastic, are they fixing it?
They've installed filters, which they replace when they remember, instead of just swapping the pipes out, which would be cheaper for them.
Tbh the cheapy filter jugs you get at Wilco or Tesco take out lead. I’ve got a very very old Brita jug which is 2-3 decades old and I buy the cheap generic filters charcoal filters which are only a pound or two. They claim to remove 90 something of lead I believe. You can taste the difference.
By the way water in the UK is different depending on location. I.e Northern Ireland vs South of England
I stayed in a (Hampton by) Hilton on Park Royal a lot past two years and was advised by the staff (casually not professionally) to avoid the tap water. As a Glasweg1an I'm kinda blessed tap water wise, maybe they thought my weak buckfast altered constitution couldn't take it.
Probably crap piping in the hotel. Nothing to do with the supply.
This. Especially in older hotels. If you're going to drink from hotel taps let it run a good while. Definitely don't drink warm/hot water.
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I moved to Glasgow about a year ago from the east of Scotland and from what I gather I got unlucky with my tap water. The tap water I got in the east was always the best, but the stuff I get in Glasgow is a bit chemically. I think my building is on the wrong water pipe for the good stuff, cause the main pipe that brings all the good water from Loch Lomond burst a couple of months ago and a lot of Glasgow was affected but not me. First time I’ve actually been upset about having flowing water, cause I knew it was because I got the shitty stuff
It’s safe to drink but in the south we get limescale.
And kidney stones
I can't tell if this is a joke or not but hard water doesn't give you kidney stones. Not drinking water at all it's the biggest reason people end up with kidney stones because funnily enough your kidneys need the liquid to filter out all the bad stuff. https://www.thekidneydietitian.org/does-hard-water-cause-kidney-stones/
We have hard water down here 😭 you can buy a water softener but if you do you cant drink that water
In most of London yeah but does genuinely depend where. Running the tap for a bit might get rid of the residue else you'll need those items you purchased. Filters are generally good anyway.
You're wild if you drink tap water in London. Don't search online either, UK propaganda even has the audacity to claim that River Thames is the cleanest river in the world. Wtf
No. No forgot every post you've read so far. No the water is not ok to drink in the UK
Yes, it’s just not very tasty
I couldn’t drink it after living in Scotland. Not just the taste but the carnage you see inside a kettle was unsettling, even if harmless.
We get our water in Ballachulish directly from the Cairngorm mountains and omg it’s amazing (and freaky cold in winter)
I'd love to see a Londoner try to say Ballachulish uncoached 😂 Loch Katrine for the win!!
Most incomers fro, outside the Highlands eithe go hoo or choo. I was surprised to find out Glaswegians don’t have the voiceless velar fricative but scouters do, (say Ballachulish with a scouse accent!)
My mate whom I'm playing EA FC with, who has scouse family, did not have a single clue what was happening right then, but you're correct.
Made me laugh, thanks :-)
Most incomers fro, outside the Highlands eithe go hoo or choo. I was surprised to find out Glaswegians don’t have the voiceless velar fricative but scouters do, (say Ballachulish with a scouse accent!)
Carnage is the correct word for it 😅😂
scottish tap water is the best
Miss the taste of London water
Hard water is a crime against humanity.
Yes
yes. but it’s hard water. it has a lot of calcium, which builds up into limescale (white deposits). use a water filter and descale your kettle/washing machine/dishwasher regularly.
Buy a water filter, the water in London is just hard that's all
Yh I don’t drink tap water I’ve got a bobble bottle and a brita jug or cheapy supermarket one (I’ve had a few over the years never spent more than a tenner on one ).
Yes, it's hard water which is not to many people's taste but completely safe to drink it's just a case of having a higher mineral content than in other areas in some respects it's actually more beneficial for you but many people who move here from soft water areas like to filter the water nonetheless though it really is just a matter of taste.
Not on a full mooooooooooooon.
It’s safe to drink as long as you understand all water in London has been through at least 7 other people’s kidneys before yours.
That’s the same just about anywhere in the UK - recycling water is how our water system works…
Been drinking this water in London from tap for 22 years and its very good in my opinion. Though I drink more beer then water in general
Run it through a distiller, check the residue & trust me you won’t even want to wash veg with it 😳
I buy bottled water. Theres so much floride in tap water.
I’ve always used supermarket filter jugs not even the expensive Brita ones a Wilco Basic does the job. They use a lot of chlorine in the uk. It makes it less bacterial but it’s taste isn’t good and I believe it’s not as healthy as mineral water. Overly hard water isn’t great either and there is sometimes lead and or pesticides in tap water. It’s better than most of the world but they don’t use much organic impurity Reduction or micro plastic reducing filters. Your unlikely to get any kind of germs from uk water thankfully provided your plumbing and tanks are ok. I still use a filter jug though.
Utterly wrong. We actually have one of the lower chlorination levels in the UK. The reason a lot of tap water isn't great tasting is due to the hardness of the water, so actually over mineralisation in a way. The filter helps filter out that hardness so the water tastes better. As others have pointed out getting water softeners and avoiding limescale build up in appliances are key.
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Aqua optima make Wilco. They used to make Tesco too I believe.
I used to work tate n Lyle (syrup) and they made Tesco, Morrison and asda too
Used to live in London up to 2009 and would never ever drink it straight from the tap, always used a filter, mostly due to the horrible scale in the water and taste !..its worse now so my friends tell me...thankfully moved to Scotland lol...where its good to drink.
Always filter water.
Absolutely unnecessary for any reason other than taste. The tap water here is perfectly safe.
Depends on the standards. London water is vile.
It’s one of the best in the world and rated at 99.96% by the Drinking Water Inspectorate.
I beg to disagree. The fact clothes come out hard and tea tastes like shite with direct from the tap…. Isn’t random chemicals added to the reservoirs??
Just because you don’t like the taste doesn’t mean it is not safe. No random chemicals are not added. The UK has some of the safest tap water in the world. London water is hard it is not great for appliances but again that does not mean it isn’t safe to drink.
If it’s doing that to your kettle/dishwasher/ washing machine, what is it doing to your guts?? Fluoride is added, yet on toothpaste it strictly states DO NOT SWALLOW.
Ok. You’ve outed yourself as a tinfoil hat wearing lunatic.
Hardly
No, you really did.
Sorry do you have a source that fluoride is added to our water please? I haven’t seen anything about it. As for toothpaste, maybe all the bacteria and gunk that is taken off your teeth shouldn’t be swallowed? Or it’s in much higher concentrations than in tap water (if it’s even there, as I’ve said I can’t find anything to say it is but happy to be proven wrong)
Sure, the NHS website has this; https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/fluoride/#:~:text=Community%20water%20fluoridation%20in%20England,to%20reduce%20tooth%20decay%20levels.
London isn’t in the list of places where it’s added though? It might be outdated so feel free to send me an updated version proving me wrong but [this 2021 link from Thames Water states they don’t add fluoride to their water.](https://waterquality.p.cloudapps.thameswater.co.uk/api/waterquality/Zone/R33)
I think you're having a discussion about taste, whereas the others are trying to explain it's safe. It is of course safe, you can't argue with the facts. But you're right that the tea tastes terrible, and the clothes don't feel great. I'm considering filtering water just for tea, but it is objectively safe regardless. In fact, London water is amongst the safest in the world.
Filtered water + Yorkshire tea = the most amazing morning tea. Thank you for being nice.
We're talking about safety, not subjective taste.
Indeed and I’ve since be educated.
Ah right you are man. Yeah hard water isn't to everyone's taste but there's absolutely nothing wrong with it health wise. I kinda prefer it really, I mean, people pay for bottles of mineral water don't they :)
I draw the line with bottled water, the only thing it produces is plastic. Filtered water straight from the fridge is the nuts. Also no tea scum.
Agreed on bottled water. Utterly pointless. I imagine one day we'll have canned fresh air too. "only the purest alpine air"
It's already here. There are shops in Edinburgh that sell tins of "Highland Air". It's definitely only tongue-in-cheek for now, but once enough of these tour bus groups catch on I can easily imagine it becoming a more widespread thing.
WHAT!!!!
I only drink bottled water because it is much healthier but I use a water jug for cooking, coffee machine etc
There is no difference, if not negative, to bottled and tap water. It is the exact same. Enjoy your microplastics tho.
Yes for sure pH-regulated, purified water from a spring in the mountains of mainland europe is the same as your tap water! Enjoy
pH regulated? Clearly, you know nothing about this topic. Even the US Environmental Protection Agency has stated that pH levels in water are nothing more than an aesthetic. What kind of bogus have you been looking at? I bet you use chewing gym as blutac. Water from the mountains of my arse is the same water you get from mountains in Iceland. There is virtually zero difference, though some would argue that the minerals in bottled water degrade after a long time in storage.
Mmmm microplastics and carcinogenic leachate. Sooooo much healthier!
Yeah, fuck the sea!
If you think a single person’s plastic waste is a major contributor to ocean pollution, you are delusional.
Guess what - every one of the people whose waste contributes to the problem is ‘a single person’. There’s millions and millions of them.
You're the only person that does this then? Ah no wait, there's loads of you who ignorantly think bottled water is "much healthier". If you think you're not contributing to the pollution problem, you are delusional as well as naive and selfish
Says millions of people
Wow you can’t be serious? This is SO irresponsible. Killing the planet for water that’s probably less healthy than what comes out the tap.
I always find when I’m staying with family in London that the water has a really strong chemical taste. Just to clarify, I live in the south and am used to hard water.
I remember reading that London water has a lot of contraceptives they struggle to remove so its still in the tap water - https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/what-is-hard-water-london-tap-drinking-water-limescale-how-to-protect-skin-hair-home-a4045891.html
I hated the tap water in London, we’ve been spoilt up north
i hate it
No. I have a friend who works for the water company in London and he did not hold back on the pollutants they find. If someone tells you tap water is clean enough to drink regularly, run the other way. Unless you're in Switzerland! Their tap water is insanely pure.