What happens if you drink tap water

Every household has tap water, but tap water cannot be drunk directly because it contains many impurities and has not been purified and treated. Drinking tap water will cause certain harm to the body. If you want to drink tap water, you can boil it in a pot. This will reduce the presence of bacteria and viruses. If you accidentally drink tap water, it will not have a big impact. It is composed of groundwater and surface water, and contains certain trace elements.

Tap water refers to water that is purified and disinfected by a tap water treatment plant and meets the corresponding standards for use in people's daily life and production. Domestic water is mainly drawn from rivers, lakes, groundwater and surface water through the water plant's water intake pump station. It is processed by the water plant in accordance with the "National Sanitary Standards for Drinking Water" through sedimentation, disinfection, filtration and other process flows, and finally transported to various users through distribution pump stations.

Problems

Heavy metal pollution

Surface water: About 50% of China’s water sources are polluted, with hundreds of organic compounds and heavy metal ions entering the water sources.

Groundwater source: Excessive levels of fluoride, arsenic, iron, and manganese

Among the more than 4,000 water plants at the county level and above across the country, 98% still use traditional water treatment processes. If the water source is contaminated by heavy metal ions and organic compounds, the traditional process will be unable to cope with the situation.

Scholars believe that at least 20% to 30% of water plants need to implement advanced treatment processes as soon as possible.

Poor quality of water pipe network

The survey shows that the quality of China's urban water supply pipelines is generally poor, with 50.80% of grey cast iron pipes not meeting national standards, 13% of ordinary cement pipes, and 6% of galvanized pipes.

Old pipe networks leak badly and burst pipes frequently, which makes secondary pollution a likely occurrence from a water quality perspective.

Secondary pollution incident

From 2000 to 2003, there were 4,232 secondary pollution incidents in the water quality of 184 large and medium-sized cities in China. Secondary pollutants are mainly microorganisms, which can be killed by boiling water.

In China's provincial capital cities, each city has thousands of water tanks or reservoirs, and secondary pollution incidents of water tanks have occurred frequently in recent years. Supervision of secondary water supply facilities in various cities is weak.

No city in mainland China has direct drinking water. Boiling water can kill microbial contamination but cannot remove organic pollutants and heavy metal ions.

Many organic pollutants accumulate to a certain level in the human body and may cause cancer, teratogenesis, and mutagenesis.

Water disinfection methods are not perfect

Since the disinfection methods for tap water are not yet perfect, most tap water drinkers use tap water. During the disinfection process, tap water is disinfected with bleaching powder (agent). Even if it is filtered hard, there is still a small amount or trace amount of chlorine (bleaching powder). When the water is heated to 100℃, chloroform will be produced, which is a carcinogen.