Mxsmanic wrote:
David P writes:

I am in the UK. Is it generally safe to drink BOILED water from the
hot tap?

My hot water comes from a tank or cistern in the loft and this feeds
into a hot water cylinder which is in the house. It doesn't look
wonderful inside that tank in the loft but I reckon if I BOILED the
water then presumably I will kill the germs.

Germs, yes, but there might be other inorganic substances in the water
that wouldn't be good for you, such as very high levels of iron from
the plumbing.

Is there another reason why I should not drink boiled water from the
hot tap? Maybe there are dangerous minerals and some other
chemicals found in the hot water system which are unsafe?

Possibly metals or minerals dissolved in the water that you probably
don't want to ingest.

Is the caution about this overstated?

I don't think so. Especially in homes that have less than brand-new
plumbing, the water that comes out of the hot tap can be awash in
inorganic material. It won't make you sick in the way that water
contaminated with bacteria would, but it may contain enough junk to
make you sick in other ways (lead poisoning, iron poisoning, etc.).

A single drink probably wouldn't make any difference, but you would
not want to make a habit of it.

I really cannot believe this. Just exactly how is all the water you
drink stored anyway, and transported to you? In containers of one sort
or another made of all sorts of things. Not to mention having been
filtered through layers of nasty organic mud, rabbit poo, fox poo dead
sheep and decaying vegetation before getting into dreadful toxic chalky
aquifers..being pumped through iron pumps up rusty steel pipes into
algae infested water towers, before getting a dose of toxic chlorine to
kill the worst of the bugs and shoved down yet more rusty leaking
victorian iron pipes to your shiny new MDPE pipe, copper pipe and
finally the cold water tap.

Honestly, is your roof tank any different at all?

It is an observed fact that the population of this country are not all
dying of cholera, staphylcoccus, streptococcus and E colii, and didn';t
die before we had mains water, as long as they boiled the kettle or
added a bit of alcohol for their 'small beer'

And if you think bottled or fltered water is much better, think again...