It’s easy to assume that water is water, and that’s all there is to it. The whole point of water, after all, is that it’s the base liquid from which all other beverages (and things, really) spring forth. But if that were the case, you could drink right out of the ocean with no repercussions, and anyone that’s ever accidentally swallowed a mouthful of seawater can tell you why that’s a bad idea.
Consumer-grade water is often run through various different filtration processes that make it certified-safe for human consumption. This includes processes like distillation, filtration, and boiling, to name a few. Spring waters are also bottled directly at the source of a natural water spring, which means getting at it before it can get a chance to get contaminated. These filtration processes are important because when water just sits out in the open in nature, all sorts of hazardous stuff like bugs and bacteria set up shop in it. If you’ve ever gone camping, you know the rule about drinking wild water is that you can only drink from flowing water like streams and rivers. If you drink still water out of a puddle or something, you might as well be licking a petri dish.
This is why access to clean water sources are so important, and why it’s not always safe to drink directly from your kitchen tap. Not all towns and cities have sufficient filtration systems built into their waterworks, which means chemicals like chlorine or bacteria can slip into the water supply. To play it safe, you should either install a filtration system in your home or buy pre-bottled water from your local supermarket. Make sure it’s good water, too; I bought some discount water a couple of years ago, and it tasted like rubber cement smells.
