I travel from DFW International Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world. Last year the state it was located in experienced its driest period on record. Nearly every summer their are strict calls for water rationing, but in recent years it has been especially bad.
Yet you still wouldn’t have any problem finding a drinking fountain in DFW airport. If Texas of all places can manage this, I don’t see why any European travel hub couldn’t.
Or Southern California, which imports most of its water. Or on the opposite sides, European countries with no water problems.
Or Las Vegas, but I’d avoid drinking their foul tap water.
In Tokyo, there are drinking fountains in most public buildings, train stations and city parks.
Not just spat on - they’re about the right height for someone to use as a urinal. And you can be sure that in a large city there will be plenty of people nasty enough to do that.
I’m in Connecticut, and there are three in the Sears store where I work - one by the employees’ loos, one by the public loos and one on the loading dock. Don’t know if the other anchor stores in the mall have them, but I’m pretty sure there’s one by the public loos near the food court.
Not in the typical design. Those bubblers that shoot straight up, maybe.
I’ve used water fountains my entire life (primarily in the Southwest) and never been sick as a result of one. It’s hard to imagine them being dangerous and unhygienic.
There’s a working one in the park opposite my house in East London. And seeing the missing links that inhabit that park at night, no way in hell would I ever use that water fountain.
A very good question, considering that piped drinking water here in Germany is on the order of one euro for 1000 liters, delivered right to my water fawcett - whereas bottled water that I have to drive to the store and buy costs around 50 Cents per liter. Looks to me like piping and treating all the water is cheaper by a factor of 2000.
Not necessarily couldn’t, so much as choose not to. I offered that report in response to someone who was suggesting that the cost/availability of water couldn’t be an issue in Europe. Whatever. Like I said before, how wonderful that the greatest country in the world can give away “free” water at all times and all places. Maybe other nations choose not to, prioritising other things perhaps; maybe some of us (including me) are just not very observant and don’t often notice water fountains, especially if they don’t look the way we expect them to. However I still find your characterisation of everywhere that isn’t America as “stingy” to invite the return judgement that everywhere else is actually just less wasteful and entitled.
See? In the good old days America was so rich we could afford two fountains per building.
Are you under the impression that the water is somehow recycled, and pumped back round again? No, once it has been anywhere near where anyone’s mouth might be, it is down the drain and into the sewer.
Anyway, most bacteria are quite fussy about the temperature range they like to live in, so any that will breed in your mouth probably won’t breed, and many will soon die, in cold water. There are exceptions, but people with them in their mouth are probably too dead to have been drinking in the fountain before you.
You would think the council would clear away that pile of bodies round the water fountain!
Unless the fountains are in a dark corner, the sun would also probably do a good job keeping anything nasty at bay, even in London.
The only thing I can think might be a problem is if there is a considerable build up of limescale, it could provide safe harbour to some protozoa or bacteria.
And if it’s the splashback that bothers him, you can just direct it to rinse the nozzle. Yes, it could have spit on it, just like someone could pee in them. I could wipe my feces on the elevator buttons at everyone’s work. But I don’t, and it is unlikely that this happens or one could get sick. If OCD is the issue, then I can somewhat sympathize, but public fountains are probably more sanitary than your kitchen sink.
Those recycling towel machines in bathrooms bother me, though.
Yes, public water fountains are generally available in most public and office buildings across America, not just the hot states, but everywhere.
This is because access to clean water was one of those Victorian sanitation projects undertaken to fight cholera and other diseases that were discovered to be due to poor sanitation, like pissing in the streets and dumping sewage into the same river/lake where water was taken for drinking. So public water fountains are fairly ingrained in our culture, and I suspect they are legally mandated, but I’m not positive on that.
Public water fountains are not particularly wasteful, because unlike those fountain things from Italy, they are use on demand. The water is not streamed until you press the button. The used water that is not drunk goes down the drain to the sewage pipe. Yes there is some, but not free running water the whole time.
The stream exits the nozzle and makes an arc in the air. You drink from the top of the arc, or if the stream is misadjusted, somewhere in the upward region, but not directly over or on the nozzle. No mouth contact with nozzle, no splashback falling on nozzle. The unused water that makes mouth contact goes down the drain.
Thanks to Dr John Snow and his new fangled epidemiology.
Although the 1854 Broad Street cholera epidemic, by which Snow made his name and great contribution, was sourced to a contaminated public water pump.
I just wanted to confirm that there are public drinking fountains in New Zealand, too. More in parks than on city streets.
IFAIK, no outbreaks of disease have been linked to them here. They seem to be all the type where you drink from the stream of water, no physical contact.
Thanks for all the great info and pics. Love the London locator link.
I sent your query to a friend of mine who happens to have worked for Melbourne Water for many years. She says there’s no difference between the tap water in city drinking fountains and the tap water pumped to houses and suburban parks.
I have seen less than five public drinking fountains in my entire time in Trinidad, the only one I can specifically remember was in some government office building in Port Of Spain.
When I first came here I’d ask say some mall kiosk worker where the drinking fountain was, get a puzzled look and ask where the water fountain is and get told that mall didn’t have a fountain(as in to throw coins in). People were baffled by the concept.
EDIT:Oh wait I can remember another one! There is one at the Emperor Valley Zoo, chilled too.
Like what? As someone pointed out earlier, the water comes out in an arced stream and your lips never make contact with any part of the fountain. Do you have any evidence that the water fountains in the U.S. are generally filthy?
Sit down and push the button and enjoy the free public enema machine?
Seriously if some of the posters in this thread are THAT paranoid well, go watch a skit called ass pennies. Here is your change sir…:eek:
