If I travel to Europe, how do I know if the local knows the water is safe to drink?
Unless you're in Flint, or a paranoiac, tap water in the US is safe. Period.
Flint's problem is not endemic, it was isolated. The article is really reaching - they cite 3 instances over ~15 years of problems in city water supplies. In 2 of the 3 cases it was caught and rectified quickly - Flint is the exception.
> Unless you're in Flint, or a paranoiac, tap water in the US is safe. Period.
Given the size of the United States that's a very brave statement. Water quality in Europe is typically measured on on commune level and even in countries like Austria which pride themselves for drinkable tap water there are incidents which cause tap water to not be drinkable at times.
The U.S. is huge but it's also filled with a lot of people and a lot of local governments, state governments, and of course a federal government.
If you want one independent source of proof that U.S. water is safe, consider that almost every U.S. child has blood work done on an annual basis. If elevated levels of lead are a problem, they would be detected at that time, as they were in Flint.
If your child is seeing a peditrician on a regular basis they will almost certainly test for lead levels at age 1 or 2. They do not test for it or do other blood work routinely after than unless high levels are found.
I remember getting a finger stick almost every visit to the doctor as a kid, but that was just for cell counts and maybe sugar that they did in the office, not a full panel of tests.
Yes, this is what I meant but phrased it poorly above. I guess a better way to say it is that almost every child has had blood work done an annual basis. But it reads like kids get a full blood workup every year, which is not true.
No, blood work is not an annual event for most children in the US. It's quite rare, which is why one doctor started testing as many children as she could to confirm that they were seeing spikes in lead levels.
Unless you're in Flint, or a paranoiac, tap water in the US is safe. Period.
Flint's problem is not endemic, it was isolated. The article is really reaching - they cite 3 instances over ~15 years of problems in city water supplies. In 2 of the 3 cases it was caught and rectified quickly - Flint is the exception.