this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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You're part of the minority then. 12% in the USA never drinks tap water. 71% of us drink it at least sometimes. source
The US has many places where drinking the water is not safe, not that people are just choosing not to. I'm sure the people of Flint would be psyched to be able to actually drink tap water again.
The places with forever chemical contamination are also growing.
You might consider updating your thoughts. The water in Flint has been fixed for several years.
The water mains damaged by corrosion were replaced, and the vast majority of household service lines have been replaced.
It'll take time before people trust the water system fully again, but it's been independently tested and shown to be fine, with continued monitoring as part of the lawsuit settlement.
According to the latest posted tests from 2022 they still show lead in test samples, although they are under the "limit". But the same tests will tell you there is no safe amount of lead. They also only did 4 samples for the 1st half and 6 samples for the 2nd half. Depending on where those samples are coming from I would proceed with caution if that was my water.
But if people want to believe the same people that said it was safe when it was brown I'm not here to stop them.
Flint Annual Water Quality Report 2022
That's normal for anyplace that hasn't moved away from lead service lines, which is much of the developed world, although everyone is doing so at varying paces. Most of flint has been converted, and testing guidelines require them to include houses that haven't if possible.
As noted in the report you cited, which specifies that it's from lead service lines, household fixtures or ground elements. Specifically not the corroded piping, since that was all replaced. Samples are taken at the tap in people's houses after letting the water stagnate for six hours.
Criticizing Flint for having water in line with global norms isn't quite fair.
I'm not sure why you say it's the same people, when the lawsuits mandated independent testing, and it's a new set of people in charge of the agencies and the entire state government since then.
The levels we're talking about detect lead from the solder used to join copper pipes in the 90s. The existence of an action threshold as distinct from a target level isn't some "oh shit" moment.
There's no safe level for gasoline in your body, but it isn't a health crisis if you get a drop on your hand.
https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2019/02/independent-tests-in-flint-reveal-water-is-well-below-action-levels-match-city-results.html
https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/flintwater/documents/2019/Report_Independent_Lead_Testing_Period_2_dated_012119.pdf?rev=e72560f19ea84ad38225bc5c22adf0a3
Sure, but a town with a population of 80k people doesn't define a nation. The vast majority of Americans have safe tap water available to drink.
Aren't "never drinking" and "drinking at least sometimes" collectively exhaustive? So what do the remaining 17% do with their tap water?
Edit: I can't count this late
Presumably answered other questions on the survey but didn't say how often they drank tap water.
Always drink tap water? I don't know how you do that, but whatever. Maybe it means when there's a choice they always choose tap? Idk.
Wash dishes, bathe, water plants, water balloons, electrolysis, all the good stuff
Can't speak for everywhere but where I live the water is safe, it just tastes TERRIBLE
Like I've accidently tasted deodorant that tasted better
Florida? I’ll never forget that sulfur stank.
A lot of cities in California have problems with hexavalent chromium and arsenic in tap water and nothing is really done about it. It’s naturally occurring, abundant, and really hard to remove from the water.
https://www.modbee.com/news/article33667080.html
I'm reading the article you posted as well as a few others I found to explain the science, risk, and scale.
This feels like you're posting it as more alarmist than it is:
But since it's in California, isn't there a risk of cancer?
The tap water in NYC is brown lol
I know it's probably safe to drink through some technicality, but it's definitely off-putting. We can't even use it in our humidifier without filtering it
Blame your building then because NYC has great water quality.
Isn't it the reason the bagels are famous?
Partly? It's the barley malt they're boiled with that makes them famous.
Every apartment I've lived in has been like this. Nothing I can do because landlords don't give a single fuck about their buildings. If drinkable tap water is a luxury only the rich can have, then you don't have drinkable tap water
If you want to understand how incredible NYC's water system is, watch this Wendover video. It blew my mind.
Of course, shitty landlords with old pipes ruins it for a lot of people, but the hard part is done.
https://youtu.be/IDLkOWW0_xg
Is the water brown coming out of the water main at the street? Is the brown being added by old piping/water heaters in your house/building?
No no! The ‘brown’ is from the BIPOC woke agenda! Wake up sheeple!
Unless you're drinking exclusively spring water, your bottled water is coming from someone else's municipal tap with an extra fee for bottling on top.