BLACKSBURG, Va. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Drinking tap water from your home is the easiest and cheapest way to quench a thirst, but some people don't find tap water very tasty. We'll tell you what could be to blame in your home for funny tasting tap water.
You need Flash Player 8 or higher to view video content with the ROO Flash Player.
Click here to download and install it.
It might look clean and clear, but to Linda Engelmann, water straight from the tap isn't good enough to drink.
"I don't like the taste of water out of the tap," Engelmann told Ivanhoe. "It has too much chlorine and chemical taste to it."
Water quality varies from home to home, and many factors can cause water from your public water system to taste or smell bad. Now, engineers at Virginia Tech say they found one thing to blame for bad tap water -- your own pipes.
"We wanted to look at how the water that was produced by the water utility was reacting or interacting with the plumbing materials that people were using in their homes," Andrea Dietrich, Ph.D., an engineer at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., told Ivanhoe.
Different pipes interact with chemicals in water and can trap unpleasant odors and tastes that develop while the pipes are manufactured. Researchers filled the pipes commonly used in homes with water and sniffed and tasted the water inside. Copper pipes gave an odor to the water and consumed chlorine. Running the water briefly eliminated the chlorine taste. And the best rated pipe?
"We found that PVC pipe imparted the fewest odors and really didn't impact the odor quality of the water very much at all," Dr. Dietrich said.
Researchers do not recommend re-plumbing your whole house to get better tasting tap water, but consider PVC pipes when fixing small leaks to keep odors out and get what you want.
"I really want fresh, good-tasting water," Engelmann said.
The perfect pipes may be all you need.
The pipe with the worst ratings luckily isn't commonly used in the U.S. anymore. It's a galvanized iron pipe that imparted a motor oil-type odor that persisted for many months.h
The American Waterworks Association, the Materials Research Society, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.-USA contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.
This report has also been produced thanks to a generous grant from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc.
