My take with tap water

[Laurasea]

Hi all,
Is tap water safe? I thought so.. but I live in Florida and we have a lot of minerals and hard water, sometimes smells of sulfur. So I switched to filtered water or bottled. At the beginning of this year I received a notification that lead and copper levels had exceeded human safety levels!!! I was further informed of several high coliform days, months after they had happened! My house was built in 1995. So the water company has been digging up the neighborhood replacing pipes!! So all I can say is I don't trust city water anymore! And am so glad I wasn't giving it to my parrots, or I would be dealing with lead poisoning, and heavy metal poisoning, as well as sick birds from high coliform counts. I just wanted to share my experience with tap water with you all.....

 

[itzjbean]

As I've stated before in other posts, it really does depend on where you live. If, like you say, your tap water from the city is experiencing higher levels of minerals like lead, etc. it has a potential to be harmful but in a situation like this I would also be drinking bottled water until the city had it cleared up.

There are members here that use well water also.

But where I live (central Iowa), the tap water is totally safe, it is hard water, no high level mineral warnings, 3 years so far and no sick or dead birds. So I trust it because I haven't had problems for years and I can drink it, never any sulfur smell.

I think generally speaking MOST people use tap water to give to their birds.

 

[RinaDoc]

I was wondering this soon. We don't have sulfur but it does build up on our shower head, and bathroom faucet.

 

[Laurasea]

I'm just sharing, the city fixed it but how long was lead and copper in the water.... In addition those boil water orders pop up for everyone from time to time, and my not be reported until the five o'clock news, what if you missed that? I'll bet Iowa does have nice water, I miss the days having good clean water coming from the tap! I don't like useing bottled water because of plastic even with recycling. But I'm do thankful I didn't expose them to lead. How many other cities have ageing pipes? We weren't informed until right before they started digging up their old pipes, and with the speed government works (just kidding) they must have been aware of this problem long before they secured the funding to fix it. So I'm just trying to be extra careful, the threshold for these things to effect our birds is much lower.

 

[LeslieA]

Been there, boiled that! I got tired of giving my birds "Stupidwater." I thought I'd be clever and give them bottled water to drink and put tap water in their bath bowls. THEN, I saw they were drinking out of their bath bowls, too!

Tap water is not always the best choice for water for any animals including you. But, also know that much "spring water" comes from the same source as your tap water! Dallas, TX is a perfect example. Also, so many people think OZARKA? Must come from the Ozark Mountains. It does, but they don't mention that the springs flow into a river that flows over a hydroelectric dam before bottling. (I'm from the Ozarks.)

The worst choice is drinking water. It's hydrogen filtered and may lack many of the minerals in spring water or even tap water. Instead, it has elevated hydrogen levels.

So, what is the best water? Water you give your children or grandchildren (whichever the case may be.). Generally, water safe enough for them is safe enough for your birds.