Comment by owenversteeg
1 day ago
The US is a huge country. In general it has excellent water; the US averages better than the EU. The Environmental Performance Index is a report that measures many things, and they have a handy section where they measure DALYs lost from sanitation and drinking water. For this section the US scores 96, within a few points of Switzerland (100), Sweden (97), Austria (96), Denmark (94), Belgium (93) and comfortably above the Netherlands (91), France (88), Poland (80), Czechia (79) and Japan (78.)
There are isolated incidents of poor water quality in each of those countries, and especially in small towns of eight hundred people in rural areas, but generally speaking, clear drinking water that is free of bacteria is standard.
On the other hand the US often relies on relatively crude chlorination to reach those levels, which those 'top' European countries don't. They instead put a strong emphasis on protecting the source water and then treating it via ozone, UV, biofiltration and slow sand filtration.
The taste of chlorinated water generally isn't tolerated.
The US isn't a monolith and neither is Europe. Overall, yes, the US uses more chlorine than Europe, but Spain and France both have _minimum_ water chlorination levels (about 0.2-0.3 mg/L depending on the regional situation) and France has no cap on max chlorine, which is very different from the US, where you can drink completely unchlorinated water in countless places around the country and there is a nationwide cap of 4 mg/L. For example NYC (average 0.5 mg/L and many places with zero.)
Oh, but you were comparing the US to the top-ranking European countries: "For this section the US scores 96, within a few points of Switzerland (100), Sweden (97)"
Also: It's a bit of a culture shock to be served soft drinks made from very obviously chlorinated water in e.g. California (one of the richest regions in the world). Is it a taste that people just learn to live with? I don't understand how this is tolerated.
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