Tap or Bottled Water?

This is a tiny post trying to answer the following question: What water source should I use in the U.S?

Of course, typically you have only two choices: 1. tap water 2. bottled water.

In my case, I’m a little worried about heavy metals and microplastics in my drinking water, and I wanna do everything I can to not fuck this up.

At a basic level, some key differences are:

1. Tap water comes through the old water system here common to everyone in the city.
   1. Depending on the city, the quality of water you get will differ. In San Francisco, most of the water comes from Hetch Hetchy reservoir, which is pretty nice. (I say most because the city also mixes some groundwater now)
   2. One interesting bit about tap water is that it contains flouride, which is good for your teeth. (Oh and at the small levels present in tap water, it should not have any adverse effects)
   3. Premise plumbing i.e plumbing in your building is also a factor that can affect water quality.
2. Bottled water has many variants, but at a basic level this is water from clean sources like springs, reservoirs, etc that is filtered (or “purified”) and typically has added minerals. There are standards in place by the FDA for bottled water, which are typically not as strict as the standards by the EPA for tap water.
   1. There is a certain risk of microplastics with bottled water, and this is mainly becaues of the packaging system since companies typically use low-quality plastic bottles.

What should I use then?

Well, it really depends on the area and to some extent personal preference, but in San Francisco, as long as you don’t have any good reason to believe your premise plumbing has issues, tap water is the way to go.

Having a water filter is typically recommended

What does a water filter do?

A standard filter - like ones you’d get in the popular Brita water pitchers do the following:

• The filters significantly reduce chlorine, which is commonly used in municipal water treatment.
• The standard filter also reduces lead, mercury, and cadmium
• The filter also reduces amounts of copper, zinc and misc particulates found in water.

The filters typically have a moderate shelf life, and need to be replaced every 2 months or so

Oh my god the pitchers still made of plastic. Does this matter?

Well, that’s true, and it’s a bummer, but the quality of plastic is different. The plastic used in filter pitchers from Brita etc are BPA free, and made of higher quality plastic. It is still a bit nasty to have this water sit around for a long time - since there is potential leaching concerns.

I found this summary from pplx to be helpful:

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/one-concern-about-bottled-wate-AzfFejIvRW6nZJmIn.7eEA

So what’s the verdict?

Well, for someone living in San Francisco, I’ve decided to go with tap water + a high-quality Brita filter.