Bathroom tap water safe to drink?!
Bathroom tap water safe to drink?
I just read something about how the rise of bottled water is a danger to the environment, and how tap water is safe to drink. So I'm thinking of converting from bottled water to tap water, BUT I need to know if:
Bathroom tap water in a run-down dorm really THAT safe to drink? I currently live in Evans Manor, Berkeley, California and I don't know, I'm kind of hesitant to drink from the bathroom.. But if it's any good.. well... we'll see.
Answers:
I would not drink it. The reason for not drinking it has nothing to do with the treatment of the water. The water is most likely safe as it is supplied to the building but what can happen to it after that is why I would not drink it.
In the event of a pressure drop due to excessive useage or a leak somewhere, a condition known as back siphonage can be created. This can cause toilet tank water to be pulled into the water supply line if certain other conditions exist. Anywhere in the building that a hose is stuck into a sink or otherwise put into a body of water of unknown quality and the faucet or spigot is open at the time of the pressure drop, can cause the backsiphonage of that water into the supply lines.
Never drink water at a funeral home or a hospital for this reason.
To be safe, if I lived in a multi unit building, especially an older one that was ran down, I would either buy water by the gallon jug or fill some jugs up at someone's home.
Use a search engine and look for backflow or backsiphonage in municipal or city water.
Many states are now looking at this as a real health threat.
As a state licensed water operator working for a water district, I can tell you that water in a supply line that is blue is what we call "tidy bowl blue" water. It is blue from toilet tank water with a tidy bowl disk in it that has siphoned back into the water supply lines. It is much more common than most people think.
Sometimes this is also called a cross connection.