<p>Where do you find drinking water at Berkeley? Not the type you shower in, but the type you put in your mouth to stave off dehydration. Specifically, where in the Clark Kerr Campus dorms (this is where I will be residing next year as a freshman, do not stalk me). Is the water free? Is it safe? Does it have chlorine or fluoride? I am a hypochondriac, so I seriously CANNOT STAND contaminated/bad water. This includes water with chlorine and fluoride (there are numerous disputes going whether or not fluoride can cause adverse effects in the brain and body, and I’d seriously rather not risk it) in it. </p>
<p>If it does have such chemicals, where/how to get/install a filter?</p>
<p>The type of water you shower in IS the drinking water in Berkeley. In the dorms, students just go to the bathroom sinks to fill up their cups (some of the students that aren’t used to tap water fill up their Brita filters instead). The tap water in the Bay Area is seriously the cleanest and safest in the nation (maybe even in the world). Several tests have proven that the water here is even better than most bottled water.</p>
<p>You can get a Brita filter, but it’s not going to take out the fluoride. You would need to get something more expensive (like a reverse osmosis filter), but I doubt that you’re allowed to mess with the sinks in order to install it.</p>
<p>I tried to use one of the water filter container… but it got tiring after awhile. I just ended up drinking the water straight from the water fountain. Basically there’s a water fountain so if you don’t want to go to the bathroom to get your water, just do that. </p>
<p>But ye… I think the water from the water fountain is probably the water you shower with lol. If it bothers you, you can always boil your water beforehand.</p>
<p>Umm, the tap water is very clean in Berkeley. The chlorine is for cleaning purpose and is not harmful to you. People might not like it b/c of the taste, but you simply need to cool the water because that will get rid of the chlorine flavor.</p>
<p>You can check out our East Bay Municipal Utility District website to read more about their filtering process. But take it from me who’s taken a couple of classes on water and I had a project regarding tap water and I can assure you the quality of the water here is better than the bottled water.</p>
<p>^ What UpMagic said. I lived in CKC and there were drinking fountains on every floor of my building. Quite honestly, getting a Britta is a waste of space and overkill.</p>
<p>Like most places in most developed countries, the tap water in Berkeley dorms is fine for drinking purposes.</p>
<p>If you really want the purest water, gallon jugs of distilled water should not be too hard to find at lower cost than most bottled “drinking water” (much of which is bottled tap water). But then all of the food in the dining hall is prepared with normal tap water.</p>
<p>As far as chlorinated water goes, be glad that you do not live in a place where you have to boil the tap water before drinking it, and where washing your hands in the tap water may not really make them clean of pathogenic micro-organisms that may be in the tap water. Also, much of the water from springs, wells, or reservoirs in North America has flouride naturally occurring in it anyway, so if you actually believe the flouride paranoids, you may have a hard time avoiding it unless you drink and cook with distilled water only.</p>
<p>In one of my classes, we actually discussed this topic and there are no many more regulations and requirements tap water must fulfill. Compared to bottled water, they don’t have to fulfill anything. Also the tap water in Berkeley comes from the mountain so basically you’re drinking mountain water.</p>
<p>If you still want to buy a water filter, Walgreen’s sells them for 20+ dollars and refills for like 10 dollars each.</p>