I’m obviously ranting at folks in the US and other developed countries. People in many countries, maybe most, don’t have the choice to drink tap water. I never drink the tap water in Mexico or Central America, and I’ve gotten mighty sick just from eating something that had been washed in the water. That’s because long ago the people in Egypt, Mexico, and other countries accepted filthy, bacteria-laced public water as a natural inevitability, and it’s not. The disgusting lack of sanitation is due to the political and economic situation in which resources are not allocated for public services. Thus, human feces and other wastes are dumped raw into the public waterways instead of being treated.

In the US, we’re being gradually conditioned to think much the same way. Water is a commodity and not a public resource. The water delivery systems that have served us well for hundreds of years suddenly are considered inadequate and in need of being privatized. Bottled water presents water as a commodity/product and is helping lead us down that path. Bottled water is for the most part unnecessary in the US and other developed countries. And it wouldn’t be necessary elsewhere, including in Egypt, if tried and true methods for sanitizing water were put into effect.