Quote Originally Posted by SteveinMN View Post

Boiling water takes care of bugs like e. coli. But boiling water does not remedy a sulfur smell or a very high iron content in the water. People filter water for different reasons; sometimes the initial expense of filtering water for an entire house is too high so bottled water is used instead.

I also will note that I often will choose bottled water when given a choice of drinks. At catered events, I don't want to drink pop or other sugary drinks, but there's almost always bottled water available. At some chain quick-service restaurants they'll give you a (tiny) cup to fill at the pop dispenser, but many "indies" either don't have that kind of dispenser or don't offer tap water. When I work volunteer events, they provide bottled water, not a water tap for my own container (which I then would have to keep track of). I don't use bottled water at home unless we've got some left over from some outside event. It would be nice if water taps were provided readily, but that's not the case in so many situations.
Yeah, I'm not the Plastic Police... I drink out of bottles on occasion. I brought two big jugs of water to Vermont since our plumbing is still filled with antifreeze (Hmm..I wonder how ecologically sound THAT is?). But when it comes to drinking out of plastic bottles, one has to be reasonable--we're all going to do it in situations such as the ones you mention, Steve. I had very hard water up in upstate NY, but to be honest, I never once bought bottled water. It wasn't done then. We drank it out of the tap.

So, this is one of those things where you think, well, what did we do 20-30 years ago? We had the ubiquitous water fountain, for one thing. We drank out of garden hoses. Now, people go "eeewww--chemicals from the city water supply! Germs from the last guy who gulped here!"

I can see how the taste out of the tap is sometimes chemical-tasting, but I truly get annoyed by people like my BIL who says, "Oh, I hate Evian. I like the taste of Dasani." I guess I don't have a discerning palate, but what I like the taste of is public water that's cheap, accessible, and meets minimum standards for safety.