
Show HN: An interactive map of countries by tap water quality - smayr
https://www.iswatersafetodrink.in/map
======
keith__talent
The primary/top database (Numbeo) you source is of dubious quality - i.e.
Opinion based. Other sources vary wildly in reputation and don't offer
information down to the city level you offer in search. The link to the CDC is
to the homepage and offers no further depth on the subject you are reporting
on.

Don't understand why you have a marketing type message that offers a
calculation cost of savings from not drinking bottled water. It is not based
on if the place searched has drinkable tap water or not. Also where do you get
these prices?

As a tech demo it is fine - as a reputable source of information its on par
with John Daly recommending Grey Goose to prevent Coronavirus.

This site is contributing to confusing or mis-information about tap water
quality. For those who don't take the time to consider your sources, it is
doing them a dis-service. You should label this at the top as a non-scientific
tool of evaluating of tap water. It almost seems like you are working for a
bottled water company.

~~~
smayr
For the map itself, Numbeo is not the primary source, that would be the WHO
data, which is weighted 3 times more than the data coming from Numbeo to put
an emphasis on a more reliable data source.

The cost-saving from not drinking bottled water is not necessarily dependent
if the water is drinkable or not, as water filters are widely available and
can offer substantial savings -> [https://home.howstuffworks.com/save-money-
with-water-filter1...](https://home.howstuffworks.com/save-money-with-water-
filter1.htm) The prices are taken from Numbeo and are the average prices for
1.5L bottles. I am aware this is not a perfect calculation method, I am
planning to add a cost-saving calculator soon which will offer more
flexibility.

Regarding the reputable source of information, you are right. Country-level
data can never be a good decision-tool to chose if you can drink tapwater
somewhere or not. It has to happen on an area-basis and include scientific
reports, which are hard to get as of 2020 as there is no single
source/database/API for that, except for very few countries (including the US
and Austria), I'm working on that and I'll try to improve the UI so it
reflects that one should check the water quality in the area of interest
rather than the country itself.

~~~
iagovar
IDK, for me it looks more like a taste map than a quality map. In Spain
northern regions have almost perfect water where mediterranean regions do have
taste and more problems due the nature of their sources of water. I mean, it's
not very useful. You'd drink tap water in my city or Madrid, you wouldn't like
it in Barcelona, although you can.

------
smayr
Hi HN! I made this while I was lockdown-bored.

The data sources are linked on the website. I plan to add scientific reports
on water-levels soon on a city-level.

I want to raise awareness on how saving money and the environment often comes
hand in hand when it comes to drinking water. For most people around the globe
drinking straight tap water or using a water filter is a better solution than
giving money to bottling companies like Nestlé!

I'd like to monetize this by either adding affiliate links to water filtration
systems. Hope this helps! I think plastic pollution is one of our greatest
challenges right now and I’d like to contribute to fixing that.

~~~
sesm
I've checked my city here is the link,
[https://www.iswatersafetodrink.in/Russia/Nizhny-
Novgorod](https://www.iswatersafetodrink.in/Russia/Nizhny-Novgorod) I don't
know where 350$ is coming from. Most of the people here order drinking water
in 20L bottles. Bottles are not thrown away, but collected and reused by water
company. We spend about 150$/year*person on this, including delivery costs.

~~~
smayr
You are right, that's one thing I missed. Water bottle prices are determined
on a country-level (I assume average bottle prices are higher in Moscow, I
should show them ideally on a city-level) and I'm assuming people are buying
1.5L bottles for simplicity's sake. I am planning to provide a calculator soon
to add more flexibility to the savings calculations.

~~~
_-___________-_
I've lived in many places where the tap water is not safe to drink, and in all
those places, nobody except tourists was buying 1.5L bottles of water.

~~~
keidjfks
In Germany, tap water has super high quality but people still buy 1 liter
bottles, because fancy name or sparkling. I appreciate the pro-nature
advertisement!

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solids
This is nice! However I don’t think it’s very accurate to put a number to a
whole country, when even the health of the pipes in your own house or even in
your neighborhood can affect the quality a lot.

~~~
irrational
I agree. Our tap water in Portland, Oregon is superb. But when I travel to
other states, like California, I'm not sure how they can drink their tap
water. At least in Southern California it tastes bad and has the distinct
smell of chlorine. Though I suppose if you live with it 24/7 you might get
used to it and not notice the taste.

~~~
sverhagen
Funny you'd say, I live in Portland, Oregon, and we do not drink the water,
except after filtering or heating. We think we've seen enough negative
reporting on the water quality, even if it's just touchy-feel reporting about
the dead birds in the uncovered water treatment basins. To us, the water
doesn't even taste as good as maybe in, say, the Netherlands. Yes, chlorine
taste at times.

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latexr
> By continuing you agree to our use of cookies

In what pertains to the EU, that might not be legal and may lend you in
trouble. If you haven’t yet, you should make sure you’re allowed to do that
(or even better, don’t do it).

~~~
smayr
Good point, thanks, I missed that! TBH I need to brush up on GDPR law. FYI The
website itself is not using any cookies, but GA and the Crisp chat are using
them.

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vanilla-almond
It would be interesting to add statistics for consumption of bottled water for
individual countries where this data is available. Bottled water is consumed
in many countries even when the quality of tap water is perfectly safe.

For example, here is per capita consumption of bottled water in Europe in
2017, by country:

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/455422/bottled-water-
con...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/455422/bottled-water-consumption-
in-europe-per-capita/)

~~~
IAmEveryone
Note that this includes sparkling water. At least in Germany, I would estimate
>80% of bottled water being sold to be sparkling.

~~~
smayr
That's interesting, I'll look into that! Sparkling water might be indeed a
reason why people buy bottled water, although there are household solutions
for that as well.

~~~
guenthert
Well, above 'sparking water' was written, but 'mineral water' was meant. Sold
in bottles and in restaurants and commonly purchased is indeed mineral water.
What you can easily do at home is carbonize the water and make it sparkling,
without, of course, the (real or imagined) health benefits and different taste
of mineral water.

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mncharity
Nice. One thought... the greatest "oh that's neat" payoff for me was seeing a
note that in some county, bottled water was widely available. And in another,
not. Which prompted me to wonder which countries that was/wasn't true for, and
how it relates to tap quality. But the UI didn't seem to make that easy to
explore.

So perhaps pull more information up to the top level? At least on desktop?

One pattern of use is "exploring the world". On desktop, this might involve
clicking once to get the little popup, with a side-effect of unpredictably
zooming and panning the map; then clicking again to get an info page; and then
back page to return to the map. For every country of interest.

I wonder if this could be made lighter weight? The country outline is nicely
highlighted upon mouseover. One might imagine adding much of the info page
core content, somewhat abbreviated, to a slightly larger popup. And even
showing that popup upon mouseover (with perhaps a delay, or mouse velocity
tracking for intent). So then one might simply mouse move around the world,
seeing water quality, bottle availability, etc, and able to more easily spot
"oh that's neat".

~~~
smayr
Thanks for your thoughts! I'll try and make it easier to "explore the world"
as you said, definitely going to remove the "zoom in". I initially tried to
keep the data shown on the map compact to keep the page load time reasonable,
I'll see what I can do!

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cauk
Hey man, really like it. Found out that the water where I am might be a bit
sketchy - didn't know.

What are you using for the city/country autocomplete?

~~~
smayr
Hey, glad you like it!

Yes I am using Awesomplete with some custom CSS and loading the autocomplete
results on page load (I figured that's more performant in my case than loading
it on each keystroke).

------
m12k
Something like this is interesting, but I find it's missing a lot of the info
that I care about. For example, here in Denmark, because our underground is
chalk instead of rock, our water has high amounts of calcium - this makes the
water 'hard', which means we can rinse off soap very easily in the shower, but
most of our water-appliances and coffee machines struggle with limescale, and
towels need to be washed with a lot of fabric softener or they will come out
kinda stiff and scratchy. I'm sure there are other local concerns such as this
(e.g. chlorine levels) that would be nice to look up.

~~~
namelosw
Taking 'hard' water for granted since I was born, it's quite surprising and
interesting that water cannot rinse off the soap.

This year I went abroad for a business trip. In the hotel, after washing my
hands or taking showers, I found I couldn't rinse off the soap. I was so
confused because it was so hard to do it, plus I brought my own soap. I
inspected, smelled, and tasted the water carefully and didn't find any
difference. In the end, I learned there is such a thing called 'hard' water.

~~~
Delk
I live in an area of "soft" water. I knew of the concept but I had no idea it
affected the rinsing off of soap. I had also never noticed that soap might
have rinsed off easier when traveling. (And even if I had, I'd probably just
have assumed the soap to be different.)

Conversely, I suppose the buildup of limescale might surprise me if I were to
spend time in an area where water is significantly "harder".

------
growlist
I'm dubious about the Numbeo value for the UK - 75.36 / 100 seems pretty low.
UK tap water is of an extremely high standard.

~~~
_-___________-_
It's of a high standard, but I wouldn't say _extremely_ high. Many places with
lower population and large amounts of deep aquifer water have much better
quality water than the UK.

------
morsch
It'd be interesting to know how much chlorine, if any, is added to make the
tap water potable. There are many places in the world where it's perfectly
_safe_ to drink the tap water, but not pleasant.

~~~
toshk
When I was travelling in Canada I was checking if the water was safe to drink.
And the government website argued it was safe to drink tapwater precisely
because it was purified with the help of chlorine. In Netherlands many of us
have the opposite view that it's not safe to drink tapwater if there is
chlorine in it (let alone the taste). Interesting contrasts in cultures :)

~~~
goodcanadian
I think you may have misunderstood. It is pretty standard to use chlorine in
the purification process, but that chlorine is not left in the water. There
should be negligible chlorine in any water coming out of the tap. I've
certainly never been able to smell it let alone taste it anywhere in Canada.

~~~
toshk
I could have misunderstood! But when you can smell it when you shower and
taste it when you drink it, there is a considerable amount of residue of
chemicals in the water. Maybe I smell it because I'm used to water without it.
I don't know if it's actually harmful, but when there are alternatives widely
deployed, for instance in the Netherlands I don't see the reason for taking
the risk.

~~~
goodcanadian
Canada is a very large country with a wide variety of water. I'm quite
surprised that you were somewhere where you were able to smell/taste chlorine
in the water as that has not been my experience, but at least one other
commenter seems to agree with you. That said, small amounts of chlorine are
perfectly safe.

~~~
_-___________-_
I grew up in a city where chlorine is not used. In Canada, and almost every
other country I've lived in, I can clearly taste the chlorine in the water,
while locals always insisted it was tasteless.

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ksaj
It seems to be by city and not by country. For example, Toronto and
Mississauga Ontario, Canada, have different ratings. The initial map is by
country, but that's a given.

I was initially surprised by the Toronto/Mississauga results, but then I
remembered Mississauga had one of the best mayors they could have possibly
asked for, until she retired after serving her office for 36 years. She must
have been doing something right.

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avh02
One thing i found interesting while living in Dubai was that (from what I
heard) the water authorities provided potable water to buildings, but most
buildings had dubious storage/distribution.

I always bought bottled water there, that decision felt justified when my
water came out sandy one day. (Though I suspect the building). I had friends
who drank tap water for years and were okay, so mileage varies.

~~~
smayr
That's a very interesting fact, thanks for that!

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sam_goody
In many parts of New York City, the water contains tiny bugs called
copepods[1] (actually a rather interesting bug).

For some, that is an issue. For some that is an advantage (protein!!). For
most, it makes no difference.

But I wonder how common such a thing is outside NY, and what other surprises
our water contains.

[1] [https://www.foxnews.com/science/whats-in-your-water-
probably...](https://www.foxnews.com/science/whats-in-your-water-probably-
tiny-invisible-shrimp)

------
markdown
[https://www.iswatersafetodrink.in/fiji](https://www.iswatersafetodrink.in/fiji)

LOL GTFO. This is nonsense.

~~~
smayr
Hey, can you tell me why? Don't know specifics about Fiji.

~~~
markdown
> The municipal water supply in Suva, Nadi and other large towns is
> chlorinated and can usually be trusted, but elsewhere avoid untreated tap
> water.

This is true everywhere in the world, is it not? What are you judging if not
the municipal water supply?

~~~
smayr
This is sourced from Lonelyplanet and to my judgment this means tap water is
drinkable in larger towns, while it's not in smaller towns in general.

This is not the same across the world, in countries like Switzerland, for
example, you can drink the tap water virtually anywhere, while in some African
countries this is not even true for the capital cities.

------
jfoster
It's interesting how many places have contradictory advice depending on who
you're listening to.

Eg. Hong Kong: WHO says it's safe. CDC says it isn't.

One suggestion: If the top-level advice is that water from a country (eg.
Japan) is that it's safe, it would be useful to call out particular places in
that country where it isn't. (eg. Fukushima in the case of Japan)

~~~
drdaeman
WHO's index of 96/100 for Russia (contradicting all other sources) makes me
question WHO methodology or sources. I get that my personal experience cannot
be authoritative source (except for myself) and is purely a single data point
at best, but still...

Russia is a vast country, but as a former local (north-west region) I'd say
that it's generally not a good idea to drink tap water there. I haven't talked
much about water quality intentionally, but I believe everyone I know holds a
similar opinion, and doesn't drink unboiled tap water.

It could be "safe" in a sense that one probably won't get sick from
occasionally drinking it, but anecdotally - in comparison to bottled water,
tap water is of questionable quality just about everywhere in Russia.

Unless we talk about separate kitchen taps with reverse osmosis systems. Even
then, most people I know, don't drink that water directly but only use that to
fill the kettle for boiling.

~~~
Assadi
A lot of Russians also believe things like drinking water with ice cubes will
give you a sore throat. I wouldn't put too much stock in something just
because the locals believe it.

Personally, I think the water boiling thing is one of the dumber things they
do because, at least in most of the big cities, the thing that is most likely
to be wrong with the water is not bacteria and other things that would be
killed by boiling your water but rather heavy metals (and, last I checked,
boiling my water does not remove lead!).

Also, anecdotally, I've yet to die from drinking from drinking unfiltered
Tomsk tap water & never noticed abnormal levels of anything nasty during blood
work. I think there is a lot of paranoia about the water system here that has
generally been undeserved over the past decade or so.

------
paines
I call bullshit omn that map. The water in the us tastes like cholrine and is
better rated than the one in germany and bosnia, which both don't have that.
Also the water is not adviced to be drank from tap in portugal where i was
recently, and it is rated with 80?!?!?

~~~
guenthert
Tap water quality differs from one municipality to another, so I wonder about
the value of a map by county. E.g., in Germany the quality is generally good,
almost universally safe to drink, but in some rural areas with intense
agriculture, the water might be so rich in nitrates, that occasionally
(seasonally?) it is recommended that pregnant women and small children drink
bottled water.

The taste and suitability to make tea differs wildly w/o impacting health
(matter of carbon content). And it's not quite clear to me, whether the amount
of chlorine should affect the listed water quality. Some people are sensitive
to it, I'm not. And you can always let it sit for a while and the chlorine
will evaporate.

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shill
Thank you for not calling it a heat map.

~~~
smayr
I was so close to doing that before finding the correct term :D

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black_puppydog
As others have noted, it would be cool to see this broken down into more
meaningful units.

You won't be able to map out every individual house with it's
copper/plastic/lead piping, but watershed maps might be nice for this. Also
would look way cooler. :)

------
thomas
Try [https://MyTapWater.org](https://MyTapWater.org) or
[https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/](https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/) for better info
in the US

~~~
smayr
Thanks for those links! It seems
[https://www.data.gov/](https://www.data.gov/) is a great source for US tap
water data used by both websites!

------
hutzlibu
Looks good, but probably not very usable. I know some areas in germany, where
you cannot drink the water because of too much chalk. But in general it is
very good in germany.

But in spain for example I could never find a tab, I could drink of - way too
much chlorine.

~~~
gruez
>where you cannot drink the water because of too much chalk

Is this a taste issue or a health issue?

~~~
hutzlibu
Well, for me, that would be allmost the same, as I believe taste has a
biological reason, as a strong indicator whether something is good or bad for
my health. (no, pure sugar does not taste good for me)

But officially science says currently no, chalk in water is not a health issue
and maybe even good.

(but I would not be surprised, if that changes in the future, like with many
other things)

------
keyle
This is ridiculous man, the size of Australia, how can you sum it up to one
number and compare it to the rest of the world. Just ends up saying a binary
system of drinkable <> gives you the run.

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mosselman
Belgium having the same quality on the map as the Netherlands shows me that
the source of then information is wrong or the scale isn’t nuanced enough to
be of any use to me. Belgian tap water should, on any scale, be at least a
category lower than Dutch tap water.

Belgian tap water is horrible compared to Dutch water. Source: I lived in
Brussels for 5 years. Could be just the brusselonian water, but there is a
reason that bottles water is a thing that everyone buys in Belgium and
practically nobody buys in the Netherlands.

~~~
smayr
You are right, I should have specified that tap water quality doesn't include
the taste of it.

Apart from that Belgium tap water is perfectly safe to drink! I don't know
specifics about the tap water in Belgium but something as simple as a carbon
filter removes Chlorine and a lot of the bad taste!

I have been to Belgium before, to Brussels and Leuven, as far as I remember I
liked the tap water better in Leuven, but that's just anecdotal. What I want
to say with that is that tap water usually varies from area to area.

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davidw
Huh, the water in Saint Pierre and Miquelon is only 91/100, worse than the US
and Canada.

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coryalthoff
This is awesome. It would be nice to be able to see the quality by state/city
too.

~~~
synn
Click on the country and then "find out more"

~~~
coryalthoff
Thanks!

------
guidedlight
“Explore other Countries in Australia”.

