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I'm from Germany and it's almost uncanny with _some_ people. Like in, you get a glass of water (from the tap, where else?) and (some) people act like "What the hell is he doing?! Is he insane? You can't drink that!"

n.b. Germany has some of the strictest regulations and accordingly the tap water is of excellent quality - everywhere.



Besides, at least here in Germany you can always get the latest lab reports right from the website of your local "Wasserwerke".

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.

.

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.


The US army camp in Heidelberg actually had their perfectly fine tap water chlorinated.

From a German point of view (chlorine tastes and smells horrible) this is just ridiculous.


The issue is that ozone purification cleans the water at the source, but it's free to pick up contamination in the pipes as it makes its way to the tap; chlorination works right up until the water is drunk. The downside is that chlorinated water does not taste great.

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.




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