WATER... for those in the UK

[newbie76]

Hello!
I know that when taking meds it is very important to drink A LOT of water.
My doc though yesterday said "forget about tap water, it has to be bottled!".
I live in London and I thought that because it rains so much the tap water here was actually very good.
Does anyone who live in London or in the UK has more info on this?

[alberche]

Hiya newbie!

Well, that's a good question. I live in Spain, and, as you may know, this is a dry country, particularilly in the center and the south. In the north, which is as green and rainy as England is, I know in many towns doctor's are telling HIV people to better drink mineral bottled water, even being tap water under health and sanitary parameters. And that's because tap water comes very high in minerals and that could produce, in a long term, kidney problems.

I live in the center, nearby Madrid. In Madrid you can drink tap water without problems and doctors do not issue any recommendation to HIV+ people  as per regards of it. Nevertheless, in general, people tends more and more to drink bottled water.

In the mediterranean, water quality varies a lot from summer to winter and doctors are starting to recommend to inmunosupressed people, aged people and for preparing babies food, better to use bottled mineral water. The problem is the same: high mineralisation which seems not to be good for the body.

In some towns and villages with intensive agriculture and farming, from time to time they find traces of products derivated from those activities in water, filtering from the surface of the land to the sources some hundred of meters under the ground. This could lead even to microorganism contamination. Water controls are regular, but in order to avoid heatlh problems, people is recommended to use bottled water for cooking and drinking.

I have heard something about London water quality many years ago, due to filtrations in phreatic layers. I am not an expert and didn't understand it very well, but the idea was that the drinkable tap water sources could get contaminated from time to time with metals and sediments. London is a very big city, you have a big river, a lot of industrial activity, and many water sources could easily be contaminated, and, even if tap water is in standards for health, maybe is better for us to drink something purer.

Regards!





 

[Miss Philicia]

What your doctor told you probably has more to do with your low cd4's and exposure to cryptosporidiosis than the actual quality of water in London.  If your numbers were higher you may want to ask him if it would be necessary. 

read this:

http://www.aidsmap.com/cms1044100.asp

[alisenjafi]

I lived in London for 6 1/2 yrs.  The reason as a plumber once told me is that London water has been in at least 7 other households before you even turn on your tap.  While I never confirmed this , you can ask any local plumber.  I lived in Kings Cross,  Hackney and good ole E15- no Shakespeare house there!
Johnny

[gemini20]

Hi Newbie,

Well I live in London (Chelsea) and drink loads of tap water, I don't even bother filtering it, just put it in the fridge so that it's always ice cold. I might occasionally buy bottled water when I'm eating out or travelling but never as a general rule.

I'm not on meds but I still drink about a litre of tap water a day, maybe more on days I work out at the gym. My t-cells are below 200 but I've not had any health problems at all.

I have no plans to change what works for me.

Emma

[Gary]

when my cd4 was below 200 (before I knew I was poz) I would have the shits like you wouldn't believe after drinking tapwater, particularly postmix soda from fast food places etc, I could never figure out why, mind you the iller I got the less of a worry the shits were. When I was hospitilised and diagnosed the water they gave me was specially filtered and I was told to aviod tap water unless boiled till I got over 200 cd4 cos of cryptosprodium.  The water here in Manchester is delicious and I can drink it now I'm over 200 even though there are tiny amounts of these bugs in it.

[JamieD]

Growing up in the UK, London and Surrey, the doctor used to tell my grandmother to avoid tap water, except if it had been boiled. My grandmother grew up in South America so it wasn't at all unusual to her to avoid the tap.

[bear60]

Google this product: PUR water filter.
We have one and use only filtered water for drinking.  It is supposed to filter out crypto.

[carousel]

I drink tap water all the time, live in London and unless there is some scare, don't intend to change that.  Good ol' Peckham Spring.

What I never understand is that bottled water can be left around for months, rarely refrigerated.

At the end of the day, you're pissing it out in minutes.

[vokz]

The safety standards for tap water in the UK are amongst the highest in the developed world and generally far safer – and subject to FAR stricter controls - than any bottled water on the market is. 

In fact, do you remember the Dasani “as pure as bottled water gets”  fiasco in 2004?

As if it wasn’t enough of a marketing nightmare that some advertising executive in New York had decided to promote it in the UK as "bottled spunk", it turned out that Coca Cola were simply bottling supposedly filtered and calcium enriched mains water at their factory in London - and actually managing to send it out of the factory door more polluted than it was when it started the filtration process .. with the added bonus of being loaded with carcinogenic bromate.

This isn’t an isolated case. Remember the benzene charged Perrier? .. or check out the plethora of studies that actually point to the detrimental health aspects of bottled water; specifically the leaching of potentially toxic chemicals from the plastic into the water.

In both the UK and US, anything marketed as table water and sold in a bottle can legally come from – and regularly does come directly from - the public mains water supply.

Whether or not you actually like the taste of tap water is, of course, a completely different story (although even there it is interesting to note that in blind tastings, carried out by Which magazine, most people preferred the taste of tap water and thought it must be the mineral water).

[Miss Philicia]

Hmmm... I thought I'd read that there's cocaine in London's drinking water because of Kate Moss.

[vokz]

Hmmm... I thought I'd read that there's cocaine in London's drinking water because of Kate Moss.

Not in the drinking water; but the Thames is high on the stuff 

".. water from the Thames already treated by sewage works still held an estimated concentration of 20,000 doses, or 80,000 lines, of cocaine"  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/06/ncoke106.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/06/ixhome.html)

[Poz Brit]

UK tap water is excellent, drink it all the time,  put it in a bottle or jug, leave it in the fridge with the top off for 20 minutes to dissipate the fluoride. Had the tap water tested and compared to bottled and it came out better.

John