CNA Conducts Study To Find Out If Tap Water Is Really Safe To Drink
Ever wondered if tap water is safe to drink in Singapore? Surely, many of you have heard from a person older than you that it isn’t.
However, a study by Channel News Asia (CNA) finds that not only is it safe to drink, it even tastes similar to bottled water.
Tap water is safe even in ‘dirty’ old toilets
Some of you may think that drinking water from the tap in your own home is fine. However, you may think twice when faced with a tap from a public toilet.
Would you drink from this tap?
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There’s a belief that tap water from dirty old toilets is unsafe to drink. This is backed by the notion that old pipes could be rusty which may contaminate the water.
However, based on the study, this myth is untrue.
Water from ‘dirty’ toilets from old hawker centres and more atas shopping centres were used to test if there’s a difference in the level of bacteria in them. The test revealed that all 15 samples had a similar amount of bacteria in them.
Skeptics may ask what about the yellowing of make-shift filters that people use? According to Flordelina Umalia, an expert that has tested water samples from Singapore, the yellowing is caused by naturally-occurring minerals in the water.
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Additional minerals in bottled water are negligible
Now that the study has established that the water is safe to drink, others would say that bottled water is still better because it contains more ‘health-giving’ minerals.
The answer to that is yes. However, the difference is so small that it’s negligible. Here are some misconceptions followed by the counters to them.
- Bottled water has potassium — you’ll need to drink 100 litres to compare to a banana
- Oxygenated water is good for you — your lungs do that job, not water
- Alkaline water is good — acidic stomach is essential to break down food pathogen
Bottled water & tap water taste the same
According to CNA’s survey, most people can’t tell the difference between tap water and bottled ones when presented with both.
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So if tap water tastes the same as bottled ones and essentially has the same mineral content, why not just opt for the former next time?
If your mum or dad tells you that tap water is unsafe, just show them this article.
Featured image from MSN Stock Images.
