I Tested My Montreal Apartment Tap Water & The Results Shocked Me

The views expressed in this Opinion article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Narcity Media.

It's 3 a.m., you wake up completely athirst, you head to the fridge and f*ck...you forgot to re-fill the Brita. You said you'd fill it up after you did the dishes but you totally forgot. You forgot to do the dishes, too.

Anyways, your next best bet is to drink a glass of tap water — it's winter, and the water is so cold this time of year, so it'll be refreshing. However, is it safe to drink? That's the whole point of my Brita right?

Well, according to Santé Montreal, the city's drinking water is supplied from the St. Lawrence River, Lac St-Louis and Rivière-des-Prairies and the quality on the island of Montreal is "excellent."

"The water is filtered and disinfected before distribution to ensure that it is safe to drink. All this is done in one of six water treatment plants in Montréal," the city says.

Hm, then what exactly am I filtering out with my Brita? Is there even a point to using it? I ask myself these questions more often than you'd think, so I finally put my Montreal apartment tap water to the test — and the results were surprising.

Surprisingly good! Okay, so turns out the city of Montreal isn't playing around when they say the drinking water is "excellent," 'cause it really is.

I used a 16-in-1 water kit that tested and measured for free chlorine, iron, copper, lead, nitrate, total chlorine, fluoride, chlorine dioxide, cyanuric acid, pH level and total water hardness.

Verdict? My apartment tap water is definitely drinkable, alright. Each and every result landed on the safe-to-drink docket on the testing kit. In fact, not only is the tap water essentially lead-free (and free of anything and everything else...mostly), but it's also at an ideal pH level, too — 7.6.

According to the federal government, "the operational guideline for the pH of finished drinking water is an acceptable range of 7.0 to 10.5," so I am totally in the clear.

While the results were pretty stellar, my apartment tap water did, in fact, have a wee bit too much chlorine dioxide, which inched toward the 10 mg/L marker when it is supposed to be closer to zero.

Other than that, I can now drink as many 3 a.m. glasses of water as I please with total peace of mind.