Hello,
Have moved recently to HK and wanted to now if it is safe to drink tap water in HK.Do people buy mineral water to drink or just use tap water.
Cheers
Hello,
Have moved recently to HK and wanted to now if it is safe to drink tap water in HK.Do people buy mineral water to drink or just use tap water.
Cheers
The tap water itself is perfectly safe, but the pipes to your building might be old and that degrades the quality/taste of water.
People here do different things: Some boil their water 20 minutes, some boil it less, some filter it, some use spring/mineral water, some purified water, some do nothing at all - Everybody's got their own opinion.
I use a Brita filter for tea/coffee but buy spring water for drinking because I don't like the taste of my tap water.
I've found that the tap-water quality here is much better than in the UK or Australia.
I cannot comment too much on the actual tap water in HK as I live in SZ but I had a friend who took his son to the doctor when he noticed discolouration of his teeth (grey), the doctor said it was most likely heavy metal contamination from water. They had always used distilled water for drinking but used the SZ tap water for cooking, i.e. soup etc.
This may not seem relevant but I believe a coniderable amount of HK tap water comes from SZ reservoirs.
Personally I don't take the risk.
Last edited by Stoob; 05-01-2008 at 03:49 PM.
ontheroad has posted the best advice about water in Hong Kong. If you live in a modern building, you probably don't need to do anything. In older buildings, the pipes and holding tanks may be poor quality. Then boil or filter the water. I have lived here for over 7 years, in old buildings (30 years old) and new buildings 10 years. My wife still insists on boiling drinking water, but cooking and other needs is straight from the tap.
If in doubt, boil and filter. If really in doubt: use bottled water: if really afraid, don't come to HK.
Ah, the drinking water debate is a dead horse that is dragged out for a flogging every couple of months. You'll get all sorts of opinions yea and nay, and the two mobs of thought never come to an agreement on anything.
Here are some examples with various nuggets of relevant information buried therein:
http://www.geoexpat.com/forum/thread13415.html:
http://www.geoexpat.com/forum/water-t20253p7.html
Tap Water - Its religious on here.
Hong Kong water is safe to drink - the trouble is in the apartment buildings. Most use a header tank and that needs to be maintained. Some buildings do a good job - others don't.
Get a reverse osmosis water filter from one of these suppliers
LIFE SOLUTIONS :
or
Perfect Life
That will clear up anything you wish for from a dodgy apartment header tank. Some of them do a free water test to see if it is worthwhile to do.