Can tap water be drunk directly?

"Water is the source of life." We have heard this sentence since childhood. People can go without food for several days, but they cannot go without water. We need to drink a lot of water every day to ensure our body functions properly. With the improvement of living standards, people have higher requirements for water quality, and various waters with added nutrients have appeared. So, can we drink the most common tap water directly?

In some areas of our country, residents often drink tap water directly. They believe that the local water quality is better and tastes sweet and refreshing. However, is the truth really as they imagined? You wouldn't think so if you see the health conditions of the local people. These areas are often high-incidence areas for diseases such as cancer.

The first thing to understand is that tap water is not drinking water. The quality of tap water in my country has not yet reached the level where tap water in some developed countries can be directly drunk. In this case, boiling tap water before drinking is the most economical and hygienic disinfection method. I believe many friends will wonder why the tap water turns yellow. There are many reasons for this. Poor quality of household pipes, severe rust, severe corrosion of the cast iron valve core of the faucet, and infrequent water use by users may all cause the water to turn yellow. Therefore, water must be boiled for 3 minutes before it can be drunk. Drinking water that has not been thoroughly boiled often can easily lead to cancer.

According to a scientific survey, tap water contains more than 2,100 toxic chemicals. Once people drink contaminated water, the wastes, toxins and heavy metals in it will accumulate and be stored in the human body, gradually building up into a large amount. In fact, not only does the water quality in our country fail to meet the standards for direct drinking, some developed countries abroad were once deeply affected by the harm of drinking tap water directly.

In 1974, some American biologists conducted a series of experiments based on the high incidence of cancer in some areas of the country. The experiments concluded that the reaction between pure substances (organic matter) in tap water and chlorine used for sterilization can lead to the growth of carcinogenic substances chloroform (a type of chloroform) and carbon tetrachloride. To this end, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched a large-scale nationwide survey to understand the actual state of substances in tap water.

At the same time, the Japanese press also reported this series of developments, causing great shock. It was reported that carcinogens were found in tap water in 79 cities across the United States, and Japan only began to pay attention to the dangers of tap water from then on.

So, how does the United States deal with the dangers of direct drinking water? The Environmental Protection Agency abandoned the previous method of sand filtration and instead used activated carbon with higher filtration properties, which significantly reduced the amount of chloroform in tap water. Carcinogens are organic halogen compounds such as chloroform. The United States has long discovered the existence of chloroform and included this new pollutant in the list of targets for elimination in the fall of 1988.

But later, something even more terrifying was discovered: the harmful substances found in tap water were not just chloroform, but more than 60 other harmful substances. Americans have always believed that tap water is safe to drink and they have no doubts about it. Now I can no longer drink it without any scruples.

In addition, when we drink tap water directly, we often find that the water is slightly yellowish. Normally, you would think it was just a little bit of rust, pour it out, get a second cup and drink it all. But you don't know what that little bit of rust means. In fact, the most direct cause of water pollution is precisely the link that has not been taken seriously, namely the accumulated rust at the very end of the tap water transmission pipeline.