After holidaying in Mauritius last year, I installed water filters on my showers to enjoy softer skin and hair, as the water in my area is very hard. I would not consider drinking tap water and promptly dry washed dishes since having a flatware set destroyed by scale (looks like rust, but is in fact a microbe that attaches itself to metal). I phoned the Public Health department, various contractors and shops to find something to add to my water to kill it - no one here had ever heard of it, yet it's well known in Canada and the US. Which makes me question: what else is in the water that we don't know about?