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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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Where I live (France) the recommendation is to take lukewarm water, add salt, and that's it.
Is texas water catastrophically bad or am I totally wrong (or both)?
I don't know the state of French plumbing, but there's always the possibility of contamination unless it's sterilized as it comes out of the tap.
But yes, Texas water probably is pretty bad.
Most water is from underground aquifers but some cities like Austin use surface water from rivers or lakes. Underground water is naturally filtered, although there are some things that live there like the blind salamander, but surface water has stuff like amoeba. Normal tap water is chlorinated and pressurized but any time there is a power outage the water might have amoebas so they do a boil water notice.
Same thing in Belgium. ENT confirms that if you are in a normal random city you can use tap water, as-is.
If you are traveling to another country or in a temporary setup then yes take extra precaution, like boiling and/or distilled.
Same thing in Germany. Just checked — no warning anywhere on the packaging and I've never heard about anything like this happening.
It was from the water tank of an rv.
But also, the quality of water systems in the us are more localized to smaller regional areas and not uniform state wide. Especially not in a large state like texas.
Holy hell, yeah I would be cautious to drink it 😬
Every neti pot I’ve ever had recommends either:
A) Warming distilled water and adding salt
Or
B) Boiling filtered tap water, adding salt, and letting it cool down to warm.
What country 😁 ?
US, but I don’t know that should matter. Even in France, water comes from a variety of sources and boiling / using distilled water eliminates risk, no matter how small.
In my family’s commune (France), there’s a lot of calcium in the tap water - such that you could actually feel it on your skin and in your hair after a shower, appliances like the coffee maker got crusty deposits with use. My grandmother only drank bottled water, I wouldn’t put that through my sinuses even if it were boiled.
Well that's precisely the argument that this specific thread is bringing forward.
They are saying the tap water in France, US or another random country is not the same. The regulation around water sources, treatment, urbanism, architecture is different and this has consequences. The regulation around medical devices is also different.
The argument is not trying to say the amoeba gives a shit, rather than instructions on medical devices are country specific because regulations are different.
Well, regulations are important, I wouldn't drink indian tap water but I'd clean my nasal cavities with swedish tap water without a thought.
It's probably more to it like how hot it is too. And not letting it sitting around in some plastic container like in the article 😵💫.
On a side note, yeah lots of bottled water here, better than soda I guess. Personlly I have a soda stream machine.
In the US, the labels suggest using distilled water or to boil tap water.
Some water is great in TX, however this could have been well water that wasn't treated the same way as a city. Ive also lived on Louisiana, where they would issue boil advisories for tap water because the swamp water could have potentially mixed in with the water going into the treatment facility, increasing the chance of amoeba. It also depends on the pipe system being used. Given how expensive it is, cities don't regularly change out all the pipes unless there's a break in the water main and homeowners also don't normally change out piped until a problem is noticed. If there's a leaking pipe that you aren't aware of, there could be contaminants making their way into the cracks.
The article says that this wasn't just tap water, but tap water from her RV. So if she hadn't cleaned the pipes or water storage tank in the RV, then the bug that killed her could have been on the RV side and not the tap.
I normally see a couple articles every year about people dying from a brain eating bacteria or amoeba from using tap water in a nasal rinse. It's just safer to use distilled water, so that you know that nothing is in it.
That's not safe. You should boil the water.
You are correct, but there seems to be a strain of commeters here that don't even understand the difference between filtered and boiled water let alone germ theory or the fact that brain eating amoebas aren't everywhere on the planet...