I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

Money quote:

> readings of PFAS that exceed EPA limits have been found in just 8% of small public water systems (those that serve fewer than 10,000 people) and 15% of large ones

15%!

Anyone who trusts their municipal water supply because of *handwave* regulations and reports needs to read that again.

Even if my water were 100% pristine as the author's apparently is, which they only know for their own homes because they've tested it at their taps half a dozen times with different laboratories, my tap water still tastes awful, and maintaining a dedicated three stage filter spout next to my kitchen faucet costs me approximately nothing and provides substantially better tasting water. And I don't need to worry about whether I live in the next Flint, Michigan.

It took two whole years for administrators in Flint, Michigan to acknowledge their lead pipe crisis. What your treatment plant claims it does and what your municipal government claims your safety profile is do not matter one bit if you aren't constantly testing the water actually coming out of your taps.

I'd rather just filter my water. It's much less hassle and I get better tasting water as a nice bonus.

A surprising amount of Americans refuse to drink tap water entirely, in their own suburban homes with quality municipal water, or anywhere else they travel, holding the opinion that plastic bottled water is safer and better. Of course bottled water is regulated far less than tap water, and contains an ungodly amount of microplastics from manufacturing and storage.

Under-sink RO systems seem pretty great to me, anywhere you live. With a small holding tank, municipal water pressure is enough to drive small RO cartridges, requiring no electrical power to run, and giving more than sufficient flow rate for all drinking water. I think the biggest downside is a few hundred dollars in initial setup, and cartridges every year or two. This seems safer than relying on the changing opinions of experts as to what amount of harmful chemicals are safe to drink.

My parents drink tap water, but every morning my father would pour away a few liters of water in case the supply pipe was made of lead and the water sitting in it overnight had absorbed some. (This is actually the official government advice in the UK, if your house is older than 1970. Of course, the better option is to replace it with non lead, if you can.)

> A surprising amount of Americans refuse to drink tap water entirely, in their own suburban homes with quality municipal water

It shouldn't be surprising that Americans might understand that their water might not actually be safe despite the municipal government saying it is. It took two whole years for administrators in Flint, Michigan to acknowledge their lead pipe crisis. Trust needs to be earned and maintained, and America is notoriously bad at maintaining critical public infrastructure.

Wirecutter is just a worse version of Consumer Reports where they don't guarantee they aren't running ads and accepting money from the retailers whose products are featured in the media