This came up a few years ago.<p>It resulted in an interesting debate about whether NYC water was kosher to drink. When I heard about it, the question was still being debated, and I don't know how it turned out. (Not being Jewish or religious, it wasn't particularly material to my life.)<p>Oddly enough it turns out that the water was unquestionably kosher to drink <i>before</i> the local Jews were told about the arthropods. But once they had been told, there was a real question about whether they could continue to drink it. The reason for this is that there is a dispensation for breaking the dietary rules out of sheer ignorance. But once you know the rules, you are responsible for following them. The classic example being, if I recall correctly, the case of a blind man who didn't know that he had been eating pork.
Funny how I read this in the morning on reddit and it travelled to Gizmodo, then to the Consumerist to finally get to HN.<p>I found the top comment on reddit[1] very interesting, although it's actually a wikipedia citation [2]:<p><i>The copepods can be added to water-storage containers where the mosquitoes breed. Copepods, primarily of the genera Mesocyclops and Macrocyclops (such as Macrocyclops albidus), can survive for periods of months in the containers, if the containers are not completely drained by their users. They will attack, kill, and eat the younger 1st and 2nd instar larvae of the mosquitoes. This biological control method is complemented by community trash removal and recycling to eliminate other possible mosquito-breeding sites.
</i><p>[1] <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/d7pso/look_what_i_found_in_my_tap_water_he_stained/c0y66a0" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/d7pso/look_what_i_f...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copepods#Water_supplies" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copepods#Water_supplies</a>
If I sold bottled water in NYC I know what my advertising campaign would be about:<p><pre><code> Feel like drinking an arthropod today?
No? Then buy our Bottled Water(TM)"</code></pre>
NYT article from 2004 discussing the same exact organisms:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/01/nyregion/there-s-something-in-the-water-and-it-may-not-be-strictly-kosher.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/01/nyregion/there-s-something...</a>
The last thing we need is another reason for people to be buying bottled water when tap is perfectly safe, cheap and environmentally friendly.<p>You ingest far worse things every day. This is intellectually interesting, but I fear it will cause people to overreact.
Haunting comment from Reddit thread yesterday:<p>"On the grand scale of things, these are about a "3" on a scale of 1-10. Start looking at everything you eat, drink or breathe in an average day under a microscope and besides being obsessive, you'll realize there are a lot of things that should best not be looked at under magnification. The only harm these will do is psychological."
I wonder how vegetarians, particularly vegans, in NY have responded to this, given that bottled water is often tap water.<p>Opportunity for a vegan stillsuit startup?