# Airline drinking water-is this true?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airline-drinking-water-is-this-true/684465>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 24, 2014, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airline-drinking-water-is-this-true/684465 "2014-03-24T18:29:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2014, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airline-drinking-water-is-this-true/684465/41 "2014-03-28T08:01:25Z")

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> [@rogerbox](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > The drinking water, that used for making coffee, tea, etc., should NEVER be consumed. The holding tanks in these sometimes 60 year old planes are never cleaned. They have accumulated so much greenish grime on the walls that in some places it can be inches thick.

Have you ever seen the inside of a drinking fountain? They accumulate quite a bit of “greenish slime” too. Or even the inside of the pipe feeding your kitchen sink? They all accumulate deposits, but we drink it and it doesn’t hurt us.

I kind of laugh at the people who won’t drink the city water, but pay high prices to fill bottles of water in the grocery store – where do they think that water comes from? It’s piped directly from the city water system, just run thru filters at the grocery store. And how often do you think those filters are cleaned by the stockboys at the store? I’ve seen them doing that late at night, with the machine open – there’s a whole lot of ‘slime’ deposits in those machines, too. This seems to be common among immigrants – possibly they are not used to trustworthy municipal water systems.

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**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2014, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/airline-drinking-water-is-this-true/684465/42 "2014-03-28T08:28:40Z")

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> [@kayaker](#):
>
> Vacationing in the Caribbean I was puzzled by the server’s actions when she filled our water glasses. My gf explained that she put the bottle of water near my ear so that I could hear the seal break, insuring it wasn’t a bottle refilled from the tap. I saw her repeat this at other tables, often leaving her customers bewildered.

Huh but in Slumdog Millionaire, you can just reseal them with super glue.

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