I am convinced that tap water is poison. In the US, the EPA specifies that tap water contain less than a certain concentration of something like 12 specific chemicals. The other 60,000+ known carcinogenic chemicals in the water supply are untested and unregulated in municipal water supplies.

Dr. Michael Colgon, in his excellent book "Optimum Sports Nutrition" goes into detail about the dangers of tap water, with plenty of references to EPA documents and other studies.

Among other things, he makes a very convincing argument about escalating use of agricultural chemicals correlating with the esclating incidence of cancer. The #1 place we ingest those chemicals is in municipal water supplies.

Colgon also describes the 4 step EPA mandated process for municipal water "treatment". It's disgusting. There are 4 steps: 1. Mechanical screening (to get out the used tires, branches, beer cans, etc); 2. Settling (to let the suspended solids sink to the bottom); 3. Precipitation (addition of chemicals to precipitate out dissolved substances like lead and a few others); 4. Superchlorination.

The chemicals used to perform the precipitation are all still in the water. So is everything that wasn't precipitated. So is all of the dead stuff from the chlorinization. So are thousands of dangerous chemicals, the concentrations of which aren't even tested.

What can you do? Don't drink it. It is dangerous. Seriously.

There are two kinds of clean water: distilled and reverse-osmosis filtered. Many of the mineral bottled waters are simply tap water that has been bottled. Just because water is "spring water" doesn't mean it is clean; many bottled spring waters are extremely contaminated. There are "natural springs" whose water contain fatal concentrations of arsnic, for instance.

I drink distilled water. When I am at restaurants I drink coke or pepsi or equivalent (those products begin with RO filtered water). There may be chemicals in those beverages, but at least you know what they are.

At my home I have a water dispenser and have 5 gallon distilled water bottles delivered. Again, specifically ask for distilled, not "spring" water.

Another alternative is to install an under-sink RO system or a home distiller.

Just because your water smells good doesn't mean its safe. Please, consider drinking and cooking with clean water.

Jim