Is tap water safe and healthy?

Reading time: approximately 11 minutes

What does safe tap water mean?

This distinction explains almost all discussion regarding tap water. The question "is tap water safe" and the question "is tap water tasty" have different answers in the Netherlands. To the first question, all supervisors respond with a resounding yes. As for the second question, it depends on your region, your pipes, and your taste. At PureAqua, we notice that customers rarely call because they find the water unsafe: they call because it tastes of limescale, because their kettle turns white within a month, or because they would prefer to keep the traces of PFAS that make the news out of their glasses entirely.

How strictly is Dutch tap water controlled?

Dutch drinking water is one of the most strictly measured products you have in your home. According to Vewin, the association of drinking water companies, drinking water is tested for over 60 different parameters and has met the standard in about 99.9 percent of measurements for years. In 2023, this involved 565,689 measurements by the ten water utility companies combined, meaning a fraction of a percent fell outside a limit value. Exceedances are reported and corrected.

These standards did not come out of nowhere. They are contained in the Drinking Water Decree, which transposes the revised European Drinking Water Directive (Directive (EU) 2020/2184) into Dutch law. That directive sets safety thresholds at or above the recommendations of the World Health Organization, explicitly identifies modern contaminants such as PFAS, microplastics, and endocrine-disrupting substances, and obliges water companies to take a risk-based approach from source to tap.

The RIVM summarizes it briefly: tap water in the Netherlands is so clean that you can drink it without worry, it contains no chlorine, and its quality is among the best in the world. That absence of chlorine is, by the way, a Dutch exception. If you travel through Europe, you will notice a faint smell of a swimming pool in many countries, which is due to disinfection and says nothing about safety. We have specifically researched how it stands with tap water in each European country.

Is tap water also healthy to drink daily?

Yes. Tap water contains no calories, no sweeteners, and no acids that damage your teeth, and it is the cheapest way to meet your daily hydration needs. Depending on the region, it also contains calcium and magnesium, the minerals that make hard water hard. These amounts are small compared to what you get from food, so water is never your primary source of minerals, but it is a pleasant bonus.

That is precisely where the sober answer to the discussion about filtered water lies. Does a reverse osmosis system filter out those minerals too? Yes, about 99 percent of what is in the water is removed, minerals included. Is that a health problem? No, because your minerals mainly come from your plate. We explain that fully in the overview of the honest downsides of reverse osmosis.

What is in Dutch tap water?

Safe is not the same as completely empty. Three topics come up most often for us, and it is useful to know exactly what is and is not known about them.

PFAS in traces

PFAS are difficult to purify from water and therefore also occur in drinking water. Vitens puts it this way: given the minimal amount, drinking tap water remains safe. At the same time, the RIVM states that the total intake of PFAS from all sources combined—food, packaging, air, and water—must decrease in the Netherlands. Water is a small contributor to this, but it is the one you can do something about yourself.

Medicine residues and nitrate

Medicine residues and nitrate from agriculture and surface water are also on the agenda of water utility companies. They remain below the legal limit values, but they do put pressure on the sources: the RIVM names the pollution of groundwater and surface water in its drinking water dossier as one of the most important challenges for the coming years. This is precisely why purification is becoming increasingly complex and thus more expensive.

Lead in old pipes

This is the only situation in which safe tap water in the Netherlands can actually become unsafe, and it is not about the quality the water company provides, but about the pipes in the building itself. The standard is a maximum of 5 micrograms of lead per liter, and on average, Dutch drinking water is well below that; however, in buildings from before 1960, the value from the tap can still be too high according to the RIVM. For young children and pregnant women, this is relevant. If you have doubts about your pipes, Milieu Centraal explains how to recognize and replace them. A filter is not a replacement for removing the lead pipes here.

Limescale: safe, but not without consequences

Limescale is not a health issue. You can drink hard water without restriction, and it is not harmful. The same applies to what the acidity of your tap water means: it tells you something about taste and pipes, not about safety. Limescale is, however, a household issue: white spots on glass and taps, a kettle with a layer of scale, needing more soap and shampoo, and in the long run, heating elements in the washing machine and dishwasher becoming less efficient. The hardness varies greatly per municipality, from very soft dune water to quite hard water in parts of Overijssel and Limburg. Your own water utility company lists the current hardness by your postal code, for example on the water quality page of Vitens.

Important to know: a water softener and a water filter solve different problems. A water softener removes the hardness from all water in the house, thus protecting your appliances and pipes, but it does not make pure drinking water. A filter system on the kitchen tap does the opposite. If you want to know what the first option means financially, we have calculated what a softener including maintenance costs.

Tap water or bottled water: which is better?

Regarding safety, there is no winner: both tap water and bottled water in the Netherlands must meet legal requirements. Regarding price and environment, the difference is significant. According to Vewin, the weighted average drinking water rate in 2026 is approximately 2.05 euros per cubic meter excluding taxes and 2.71 euros including taxes. That is about 0.3 cents for a liter of tap water, compared to several tens of cents to more than a euro per liter for water in a bottle. The tax on tap water is 0.437 euros per cubic meter, and rates increased by an average of 4 percent in 2026.

Milieu Centraal reaches the same conclusion from the perspective of sustainability and puts tap water at the top as an environmentally conscious drink choice: no producing bottles, no trucks, no waste. Anyone switching from bottles to the tap wins on all fronts except for taste experience. And that last part is exactly where a filter or a pure water tap makes the difference.

When you should let the tap run first

There are four situations in which even excellent drinking water requires a little attention. They all have to do with the pipes in your own home, not with the source.

• Stagnant water: If the tap has not been run for a few hours or overnight, let the cold water run for a moment until it feels noticeably colder. Water that remains in the pipe warms up and absorbs more substances from the pipe material.
• Water from the hot water tap: Never use that for drinking or cooking. In a boiler or geyser, water sits for longer periods at a temperature where bacteria thrive better.
• After a holiday or vacancy: Flush all taps for a few minutes before you drink from them again, and do the same for the water tank of a boat or caravan.
• During a boil-water advisory: If your water utility company issues a boil-water advisory, boil the water for two minutes before drinking it until the advisory is withdrawn.

If the color or smell of your water changes structurally, the correct first step is not to buy a filter but to call your water company. Brown water is usually iron or rust after work and often clears up within an hour. If you want to get an impression of how many dissolved substances are in your water, a TDS meter will measure that in a few seconds. That value says nothing about PFAS or bacteria, however—only about the total amount of dissolved salts and minerals.

Comparing tap water, filter pitchers, bottled water, and osmosis water