Asklemmy

US it depends on where you live. I grew up and live now in upstate NY and the tap water is great. In between I lived in Arizona and the water was terrible. I have at different times a water cooler or an undersink reverse osmosis. The water wouldn't make you sick though so you can drink it if needed, it was just very hard and tasted bad.

Not at all...where I live tap water isn't clean at all. It comes in a white colour with pression. And mining industry contaminated a lot

Semi-rural American here. Our water comes from a well and is safe to drink. However, it is hard water and we often prefer to either use a purifier or buy purified water for drinking directly.

Canada here - tap water is just fine, I filter it at home since I prefer the taste but I've never been adverse to drinking it straight

Australia: We don't boil tap water here in Australia.

In Canada most people drink water after filtering through a Brita, but it's safe to drink without.

Poland here, tap water is pretty drinkable in cities, not sure about rural areas though, also I personally use Brita filter just to be sure

Luxembourg here, i'll drink straight from the tap.

German: Yes. Most of the water I consume comes straight from the tap

Just ask someone from there on day one. They can obviously tell and i think this is the best strategy. I bet it's safe like in most parts of middle and northern europe.

I visited australia and we had to drink from the tap.

Canadian in a major city - yes, safe to drink right from the tap.

However, many remote communities here do not have access to safe drinking water.

In the UK they had separate taps for hot and cold because the cold was safe to drink and the hot was not.

I'm from Denmark, and water is safe to drink straight from the tap here.

In Argentina, generally you can drink straight from the tap.

In Malaysia, the water is advertised as safe to drink. Large majority however, either boils it or uses their own water filters.

No, I never drank unfiltered tap water. I have always lived in areas with poor-tasting tap water. It's not necessarily dangerous, but has a high calcium content and isn't the cleanest either.

As a kid, we had a carbon filter on our refrigerator, and that was good enough. When I moved out of my parents house, I started getting those 5 gallon bottles and would refill them at the grocery store.

I eventually got my own refrigerator that had a carbon filter, but I couldn't really go back to a carbon filter once I got used to water filtered by a RO system. It just didn't taste very good. So about a month ago I installed a RO filter under my sink, and now I don't need to drag my bottles to the store anymore. Best of both worlds!

I never drink water out of the tap because I prefer to filter it first. It’s safe to drink but I want it clean and much colder so into a filter pitcher and put that in the fridge

German Here, we have really good Tapwater here.

US, tap water is perfectly good to drink.

Having visited Iceland a few years ago, Iceland's tap water is the best tasting water I've ever had anywhere. Please take this opportunity to try it while you're there.

Generally in the west (US/Canada, and most of Europe) tap water is safe to drink. I've been to Iceland and don't remember tap water being a concern. This is something you should double check before every trip though. A good rule of thumb is just going by how developed/rich the country is that you are visiting, with more developed countries usually having potable tap water but this is not a guarantee. (And some countries are far too large and diverse to apply this rule efficiently)

Also asking the locals is not necessarily a good idea either as there immune system might be accustomed to the different bacteria and pollutants in the water. For example drinking tap water in some places in the Middle-East might not be an issue for the locals but as I haven't grown up there I probably wouldn't risk drinking tap if I can avoid it, not to ruin the trip with getting sick.

TLDR: check with your country's official travel recommendations

Edit: someone mentioned bottleded water just being bottled tap water. While this is not uncommon in Europe (not sure about the rest of the world), the water does go through extra steps of filtering and cleaning meaning it might be a bit safer to foreigners.

From Singapore. Tap water here is potable but we boil it first out of habit. (But I use tap water for drinking when boiled water has run out).

Croatia here,

tap water is completely drinkable and safe without any boiling. Exception are some more remote islands, so if you are going on some island, chekc if the tap water is drinkable.

Fun fact: Croatia actually uses drinkable water for toilets as well, altough i would not drink from a toilet :)

Australian here, never met anyone who boils tap water before drinking it. Some people have filtered water taps installed but our tap water is usually pretty great, I drink probably 2-3 litres of it a day

Poland: water is always drinkable from the tap.

India here. I can drink tap water without boiling, it just has a slight chlorinated taste. That's why we prefer to filter it, rather than boil.

Yes, living in the US, it's safe to assume that any tap water is safe to drink without boiling. Sometimes it doesn't taste great because of mineral content, but it's safe with very few exceptions.

That's also been the case in any developed country that I have visited, including Iceland, Canada, pretty much all of Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. There may be exceptions in all of those places, but in any large city in a developed country you can drink the tap water.

Even better, I do not boil I run though and store in a Brita pitcher that should have had a filter change six months ago!

New Zealand, Christchurch. We can drink straight out of the tap BUT it was chlorinated while our crappy infrastructure was being upgraded in recent years. Still is in some parts of the city I think? The actual water is from deep aquifers and was pristine and then it went through our dodgy wellheads which have since been upgraded.