US here. Yes, can confirm I can, and do drink water from the tap without boiling. The city provides, maintains, and regularly checks the safety of the water. Notices are put out if something damages the pipes and a “water boiling” policy is put out promptly over local radio and/or newspaper.

Lol, I was you 10 years ago. For context I’m Malaysian and we only drink water that is first filtered and then boiled. When eating outside we generally avoid iced drinks unless it’s a reputable shop.

Then I moved to Australia and reacted with utter horror to see my then-bf drink straight from the tap. I was like wtf you’re going to get parasites! Spit it out!

Now I drink water like Aussies and my kid refills her bottle from the tap too. My parents, when they visit, still boil water to drink but they’ve at least stopped thinking we’re trying to murder their grandchild.

Berlin, Germany: we drink water straight from the tap. It’s free and delicious. If you don’t feel like drinking tap, just drink a “Berliner Rohrperle”. It’s the same thing with a fancier name, because our tap water is awesome.

Nowadays we even have public drinking fountains dotted around the city.

One thing to consider: While tab water in most of the developed world is potable,any water safety guarantees usually end where the house water pipes begin. Depending on the state of the piping, tap water might not be safe, even if the water supplyer says it’s safe.

You can get a water test (especially bacteria is important) for relatively cheap. Last time I did such a test it was ~€60. It’s not wrong to do one.

Also, the definition of potable water is that the water is potable after the tap has been running for 10(!) minutes.

Bacteria contaminated pipes are pretty common and if the water has been sitting in these biofilm-covered pipes over night or even longer, the water can become pretty harmful. Especially after you get home from a vacation, letting the water run for a decent amount of time might be a good thing.

Also: the worst thing that can happen to your water pipe system are blind pipes, so pipes that are connected only on one end. That could be e.g. left-over plumbing after remodeling or pipes that lead to unused taps. If at all possible, these ahould be removed or flushed at best daily.

México. NO. Do not drink the tap water. Boiling does not help. It has a bunch of heavy metals and other contaminants in it. It sucks because mechanical filtering is incapable of removing them effectively. Reverse osmosis does but it is a challenging and expensive process to properly keep in your house. We always buy bottled water. Trucks deliver twice a week.

Netherlands: our tap water is better than bottled spring water

Finland

Yes. Our tap water is among the cleanest on earth

In this US, yes, we generally trust our tap water (although there have been notable incidents of water infrastructure failures, such as major lead contamination in Flint, MI), to the extent that if you get a drink in a restaurant here, 99% of the time it’s going to be mixed or made using tap water, with ice made from tap water.

Some folks will use a filter (Brita brand filter pitchers used to be popular at one time, with TV ads and everything) but that’s more for filtering out chemicals/toxins/minerals than anything else.

In rural places, every now and then the local government or water company (yes, a lot of places here have privatized water infrastructure which is not super great) will put out a ‘Boil Water Notice’ but this is generally considered outside of the norm, and you usually expect to see that kind of stuff resolve within a couple of days unless it’s a result of a major disaster (we were under a Boil Water notice for 2 weeks after hurricane Katrina in my area, the longest stretch I ever remember). Boil Water notices are usually a result of either a breach of the infrascture (a pipe collapsing and the water supply getting dirty), or a water supply failing its regular quality/safety tests. Our water (can’t speak for everywhere in the US, and don’t really know the specifics of how they do it) is chemically treated and filtered before it goes into the tap, and the supply mechanisms are usually regularly tested to make sure they’re within safe standards.

All of that being said, I know people who refuse to drink tap water, mostly because it tends to have a distinct taste from treatment and from having minerals in it, but also because they’ve heard horror stories like in Flint. Two things: those folks normally drink bottled water, which is usually just bottled-up tap water from some other place; and I usually see those folks gladly drinking fountain drinks/tea/etc at a restaurant, which is made with un-boiled tap water and served on tap-ice.

TL;DR - the tap water in the US is generally considered safe to drink, in most places, with notable exceptions, and for now (our mostly-privatized infrastructure is getting worse and worse, and very public failures have started to appear in not only water infrastructure, but everywhere)

Bermuda here, straight from the tap!

It actually gets collected from rain water on each individual home’s roof. The roofs are lime-washed to kill the really nasty stuff as it runs down in to a holding tank under the house. Some times you get dead critters in there, but nothing larger than a small lizard or bug. They tend to sink to the bottom of the tank, below the outlets.

Most Bermudians swear by a “cup of bleach” thrown down there every couple of years. It’s in to a tank that’s 10,000gal+ at a minimum (mine’s over 40,000), so it’s basically homeopathy at that point - but the lime-wash works!

The only place you’ll want to avoid it in Bermuda is in the City of Hamilton (mains, not great quality), a house with a dirty roof, or in one near the sole power station on the island. This is an on-going fight to get them to adhere to the emissions safety standards they claim to.

White roofs and smoke stack in the picture!

I live in a major Italian city, I’m well over fifty, and I’ve always drunk unfiltered water straight from the tap without boiling. Some Italians apparently don’t like the taste of tap water but it’s still safe to drink it unfiltered and unboiled in nearly all the country.

UK. Yip. Water “hardness” varies across the country which means people usually prefer the taste of the water in the region they grow up in. Other than all the leaky underground pipes and lack of investment in a privatised service, UK water is actaully very good.

Manila, Philippines: My drinking water comes from a delivery service that drops off a few blue containers of drinking water every few days. I’ve never swallowed tap water but I do use tap water when rinsing after toothbrushing. The sticker on the blue containers has the company name on it, contact details (obviously), and something about “18-stages latest US technology”.

Argentinian here, depends on the region of the country, in most places it’s safe to drink tap water although it usually has too much chlorine or in small rural cities like mine sometimes there’s a bacteria leak on the water so we prefer to buy bottled water

Italy here: tap water is drinkable BY LAW, at least inside houses and public places.

Important:

Despite the overall quality of the water in the region, the water pipes can ruin it. If you got lead pipes you should avoid drinking the water or using it for cooking. Boiling won’t change it.

In Germany, landlords are legally required to tell you if there are lead pipes in your house, don’t know about other countries. Typically, the risk of having lead pipes is higher if the house is older.

TL;DR: lead pipes are very bad