Hey, you want "raw" water, stand out in the rain looking up with your mouth open.
You know, I'd been reading the various articles on this, as well as the comment sections, and there's apparently a whole segment of society that would never drink rain water because it's too "dangerous".
Which takes me to partially defending the "raw water" thing. Not of course the hipster aspect or the price, but what seems to be the idea that only ultra purified water can pass through the lips of humans or death is imminent.
There was a time, not that long ago, that people would have been laughed at for drinking Evian, and in fact when it first became popular, I remember people laughing about it and thinking people were nuts paying money for it. People bought distilled water at the store to put in their car batteries, and if they needed drinking water otherwise, had the Sparklett's man deliver it in five gallon glass bottles.
Certainly I wouldn't drink out of a water source without filtering it if it has not been tested*, but the idea that water has to be triple purified or we're all going to die is kind of ridiculous. As I mentioned above, I've just drilled a new house well. The old, shallower one was an unfiltered drinking source for over 20 years. It wasn't until lab tests from the last 5 or so years caused the switch to filtering it. Even then, the nitrate count that caused me to filter it is not necessarily "bad". While it's above the EPA limit, the EPA has no definitive knowledge or guidance on what "unhealthy" amounts are. Honestly, eating bacon puts way more nitrates into a person than the nitrate levels in that water.
I expect the new, deeper well to test as good as my ag well, which has better test results than bottled water at the store. This is "raw" water, and there's nothing wrong with it. The idea that "untreated" water out of the ground is the equivalent of drinking sewage water** is ridiculous. Same with rain water. While I might be curious about the cleanliness of rainwater that fell through the Los Angeles skies, I wouldn't worry much in most places, and wouldn't worry about drinking it "raw". While I might still put it through my Berkey filter, much like I will do with my new well water, that's just abundant caution, because the water gets tested annually versus weekly. As far as taste alone, "clean" municipal water needs filtering more than my well water does. Santa Barbara municipal water tasted terrible back when I was on it, and I always filtered it for coffee and cooking, and for general drinking, preferred bottled water.
This is one of those things where people seem to go to extremes, when a common sense middle road exists.
* In the late 70's - early 80's my buddies and me always drank Sierra water straight out of the stream when we were backpacking. The same thing people were doing for hundreds of years before us. While Giardia is prevalent now, even up there (and I do filter the water there now), the water used to be just fine "raw", given that you used common sense and got it from an active source.
** I recall in a water class in college, the professor did a lot of work with Mexico on providing potable water sources there. He said that our sewer water that got tertiary filtering (somewhat new at the time - mid 90s) was cleaner than municipal water in most of Mexico.
