For many people, water from a drinking fountain comes with a healthy dose of nostalgia. They remember being a kid in school and slurping delightedly at the fountain’s cool, refreshing, arching stream after working up a good sweat on the playground, in gym class, or sports practice.
You have to go back several decades, but there was a time when neither bottled water nor water bottles existed. The closest thing was a canteen, and you never saw anyone carrying one of those except for on long hikes or camping trips. In those years, a drinking water fountain was like an oasis in the desert, and the first one to get to it was the king or queen of that territory until they decided to step aside and let others partake!
Today, we have multiple ways to get the water our body needs to stay properly hydrated. That being the case, should water fountains still be our go-to hydration source?
Most people have grown up trusting the municipal water system where they live. Unfortunately, events in recent years have shown that tap water isn’t always free of dangerous contaminants. Lead poisoning from tap water is a particularly concerning possibility.
If you have tap water that smells like rotten eggs or tastes bad, you’re not alone. The same is true of cloudy tap water or getting yellow water from your tap. The quality of tap water varies from location to location and can change over time.
This is surprising to many people. We assume that our tap water is closely monitored for quality and consistency and that there are drinking water standards in place to ensure that the water from our tap tastes good and has no odor. However, at the same time, we know from our experience and, sadly, from news reports about serious public water contamination, that the water supplied to a home or business through municipal systems varies widely.
