Tap water in the Netherlands is “not drinkable”, runs “through pipes with all kinds of junk in them” or contains all kinds of harmful substances, such as “heavy metal, chemicals, hormones and last but not least fluoride.” Influencers on social media regularly make fun of the water that flows from the tap in all households in their videos. For example, they report that they have done a test that shows that tap water is dirtier than bottled water.
Young people in particular appear to be sensitive to the images of cloudy tap water that are shown for evidence. Among them, confidence in the quality and availability of tap water is “significantly” lower than among other Dutch people, according to research conducted on behalf of the drinking water companies.
Young people between the ages of 18 and 24 give their tap water at home a 7.9, the research agency notes in the report published on Thursday. That score is considerably lower than the average rating of 8.4 given in the Netherlands.
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Selling water filters or bottled water
“I am shocked by these figures,” says chairman Pieter Litjens of the Association of Water Companies in the Netherlands (Vewin). To “counter misinformation about tap water and build trust” Litjens: “Confidence in the government has decreased across the board. It is not surprising that this also applies to young people. But if people even have less confidence in something like tap water, many things that are taken for granted disappear. And what also scares me is the amount of disinformation that is fired at young people on social media. That feeds this distrust. And that is a shame. Because it is not necessary.”
The fact that the water contains minerals such as lime is a good thing. You need minerals
In recent months, confidence in drinking water has been further tested by advice to boil the water, such as recently in Utrecht and Amersfoort. According to the drinking water companies, this proves how carefully the quality is monitored. This is also the opinion of water researcher Roberta Hofman, affiliated with the KWR water knowledge institute. “You have to search for a long time in the world to find better drinking water,” she says. “It’s really good here.”
It is not always clear what the motives of opponents of tap water are. Some have a deep distrust of everything that has to do with the government, others seem more driven by commercial interests and mainly want to sell water filters or bottled water. Companies that manufacture these types of products sometimes do not hesitate to disqualify tap water. “You drink trace amounts of antidepressants and painkillers every day,” says the company Fluofree, a seller of water filters, on its website. “Fish change gender through hormones in water. What do you think that means for people who drink this every day?”
A thousand times cheaper
Almost all claims are “bad nonsense” and in some cases downright “nasty,” says water researcher Hofman. She refers to a ‘test’ by a company that claims to prove that there is brown sludge in tap water if you run electricity through it. Hofman: “Then you frighten people and you deliberately mislead them. Because every chemistry student knows that if you place an iron rod in water under electricity, the iron reacts with the current conducted by minerals in the water, causing brown sludge to form. And the fact that there are minerals such as lime in the water is a good thing. You need minerals.”
Vitens’ water production location at Engels Werk in Zwolle. Here groundwater is processed into drinking water.
Photo Wouter de Wilde
Tap water with minerals is “at least as healthy” as bottled water, says Hofman. According to her, it is always wise to drink tap water. Not just because it is “about a thousand times cheaper” than bottled water, and “one hundred and fifty times less” CO2emissions, but especially because the quality of tap water is controlled “much more strictly”, on “many more parameters”.
Water filters also cause more problems than they solve, says Hofman, mainly because they are a breeding ground for bacteria. Some suppliers try to market their filters in a “very ingenious” way. “They say that their filters remove chlorine and fluoride from the drinking water. That is great for countries that add that to the water. But here these substances are not present at all.”
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