I think that Jennifer from Brooklyn wants to know if the water contains fluoride or not. If she is of the school of thought that believes in fluoridated water she will not have to seek other means of getting fluoride to protect teeth. If on the other hand if she is anti fluoride she probably wants to know so she can plan ahead. I really don't think she was questioning the quality of Rome's water.
Posts: 2605 | Location (City & State): Connecticut, USA | Registered: 07 October 2005
IMO Rome tap water is OK but not fabulous. New York water was better. Rome water is full of calcium and therefore very "heavy" tasting. Most Romans seem to drink bottled water - probably for this reason. The calcium also blocks the pipes, fills your kettle with limescale etc - a real pain.
I just got a Brita water filter and it's improved the drinking water taste tremendously. I prefer the filter to always buying bottled water as bottled water a) does not contain fluoride and I'm in the pro-fluoride camp and b) fills the landfills with billions of plastic bottles.
Alice - the point is that in the US many (most?) communities ADD fluoride to their water in the belief that it protects teeth from decay, not learning the natural fluoride content of the water itself (I'm sure that few if any of us know whether 0.18 is a good number or a bad number).
In my experience, few if any places in Europe follow this practice. I know they don't do it here in Naples. Instead, my dentist uses a fluoride cream which was poured into a mold which I have to hold in my mouth for a couple of minutes after a cleaning. The taste is disgusting and it's difficult not to gag on it. I'd much rather have fluoridated water!
OTOH, I agree that the taste of the water in Rome is excellent!
No, adding anything to water is prohibited. As you can see from the table, fluoride is in the "dangerous substances" table. No, we do NOT add fluoride. Fluoride is OK if absorbed by the teeth alone, but just as well as you would not want to eat a sun lotion, you should not want to ingest fluoride in high amounts.
In the US and other parts of the world minute amounts of fluoride are added to the water supply only where it does not occur naturally. I guess fluoride occurs naturally here so there is no need to add it (now if we could only remove the calcium! )
AT - as I said upthread - we just got the Brita (with the new Maxtra filters) and it is fantastic! The water tastes so much better without all that calcium. And my coffeemachine is working a lot better too!
Wow! Such a simple question, such interesting issues raised. Thanks, everyone, for your perspectives. I guess I'm pro-fluoride-in-the-water (per our kids' dentist's recommendation). We use a Brita even in NYC, though the tap water is great...so I guess we'll keep doing that in Italia. Grazie a tutti!
Posts: 78 | Location (City & State): Brooklyn, NY | Registered: 16 August 2006
Jonnofor: what filters like the Brita ones do to water is reduce the mineral content¹. if your water is high in fluoride and you want to keep it that way, you need to drink itt straight from the tap: once filtered, the fruoride content will be severely cut back.
¹ Water is a mineral too, I know. They reduce the salts dissolved into water, including the fluorum salts, thus making the water purer, with less "other" minerals dissolved into the basic H2O
I've got Monte Amiata water in the taps. Don't know what's in it, but it is sweet and soft and delicious. Glad I don't have to buy bottled water. That's become a real hot button issue in parts of the world. Ecologically unsound and also exploitative. Did you know that the major water selling corporations are selling you water from the tap in many, many cases and making a, I kid you not, 7000 percent profit on it?
Posts: 1684 | Location (City & State): Val d'Orcia - Monte Amiata | Registered: 12 June 2004
The reason why it's sweet and soft is that there is very little added to it, chemically or naturally. Water in mountain rareas is like that. Also in Italy companies can now buy water from the acquaeducts and sell it, but it has to be labelled "acqua da tavola" (I think) instead of "acqua minerale" (which is only water from natural sopurces directly). Yet, even on "acqua minerale" the profits are obscene, and very few of the waters sold in itlay do really have any curative properties: even if they had in origin, they often go lost in the bottling process. On the other hand, regulations on tap water are stricter than those on bottled water of whatever type: essentially, from many points of view tap water is not onlyt "fresher" but also safer. Yet, in some areas (especially the heavily agrocotured areas of Pianura Padana), there are recurrent cases of atrazine or other pesticides contamination.
Expats in Italy Forum 
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