Million of people worldwide drink "raw" water without dieing from it.
I could apply the same logic: millions of people drink raw water - and die from it, especially in third world countries with bad public sanitary equipment. The argument goes both ways.
and fresh water from a spring or a well really can be better than the chlorinated tap water.
It can be. Maybe. Possibly. But the risk is certainly higher in comparison to treated water. That's what this is all about.
Touché
Certainly, but everything in this society is risky. Even treated water can be risky, tap water can also be contaminated, crossing the street by feet is madness, and most deaths happen in the bed ...
I was frequently going for hikes in the mountains back when I had more available time, sometimes for a full week. Of course, I would always drink "raw" water, fresh with oxygen, humus and minerals, rather than carrying lots of water from home. Of course there is a probability that someone with cholera would have been defacing in the water upstream ... but in the mountains in Norway, that probably must be some magnitudes lower than the probability that a plane would crash with my house while I'm sleeping there.
Of course animals and birds are shitting in the water - but then again, in the Norwegian mountains it will be very much diluted - as far as I know, a single bacteria or virus is usually not sufficient to make one ill, there must be more of them.
I remember once we met some american tourist, they were hiking in the mountains and staying overnight at staffed lodges (simple hotels). Every morning they would fill up their water bottles - all until they learned that the water they would get from the lodges was indeed raw, coming directly from whatever river would pass the lodge. :-)
Of course one should use some common sense - if the water has passed farmland or urban areas, it's probably not good to drink (though I remember first time I met my wife and some friends of her - they were tourists in Oslo, slept in a tent in the famous Vigeland park and picked up coffee water from the local creek). Same if it's still standing water with no inlet or outlet, water trickling very slowly through wetland, any water when it has been raining too much or in years with too many lemmings, etc.
Maybe we're just lucky in Norway, or maybe I'm just careless and taking too many risks. Whatever. When it comes to - we can agree that "raw" is a pretty pointless marketing slogan when it comes to bottled water. However, as long as it's analyzed and found safe, it's probably equally good as any other bottled water.
When I was a child, the water from the tap was without chlorine - it was coming from the municipality network, but without chlorine. At some point they started adding chlorine to the water, and it was completely horrible to drink. Eventually one gets used to it, but I still prefer water without chlorine.
I also drilled a well at my previous home, since it's not a well known place to find arsenic and uranium, I took the chance and drunk the water for months before I bothered to get it tested. My neighbour also came to me to collect some drinking water as he claimed the coffee tasted much better with my water than with the municipality water.
Now we have a