Vitens water quality: how good is your water?

Reading time: ~9 minutes

What is Vitens and where does it supply water?

Vitens is the largest drinking water company in the Netherlands. The company extracts groundwater, purifies it and supplies it to households and businesses in Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Overijssel and Utrecht, plus a number of municipalities in Drenthe and Noord-Holland. According to the company's own figures, that amounts to 5.8 million customers, roughly a third of the Netherlands.

That explains why so many people search for their supplier's name rather than "tap water quality". You see Vitens on your annual statement, so that's the name you type in when you wonder what actually comes out of your tap.

Important to know: Vitens is responsible up to your water meter. Everything after that, meaning the pipes in your own home, falls under the owner of the property. That distinction comes back later, because that's precisely where the grey area lies.

How good is Vitens' water quality really?

Short answer: good, and that's not marketing talk. Vitens states on its water quality page that the laboratory takes and analyses water samples at various locations every day. If anything unusual is found, a measure follows, such as a boil-water advisory or a pressure reduction in the network.

What the national figures say

At sector level, the picture is consistent. According to Vewin, the association of water companies, Dutch drinking water meets the quality standards set in 99.9% of measurements within the statutory monitoring programme. In 2018, that involved 637,577 measurements. Dutch tap water is therefore among the cleanest in the world, and that also applies to the Vitens area.

Where you can find your own figures

Vitens publishes a water quality overview per area, by postcode. In it you'll find, among other things, the hardness, the iron content and the measured values of substances that fall under a standard. If you want to know why those values can differ per street, our explanation of water hardness per municipality can help, in which we compare the hardness of dozens of municipalities side by side.

Water hardness in the Vitens area

Hardness is the topic Vitens customers search for most often. Every month in the Netherlands, "vitens waterhardheid" is searched around 320 times and "waterhardheid postcode" 590 times. Logical: limescale is the only water problem you can see with the naked eye.

Vitens explains that hardness is determined by the amount of calcium and magnesium in the groundwater. Those minerals are found in limestone and chalk layers in the soil. Because the soil differs per extraction location, hardness varies per place of residence. The company adds that truly hard water barely occurs in the Netherlands any more, because water companies soften the water where needed.

What hardness does and doesn't mean

Hard water is not unhealthy. Calcium and magnesium are in fact minerals your body needs. What hard water does do: limescale on your showerhead, scale in your boiler and a kettle that furs up more quickly. Vitens therefore advises lowering the temperature of hot water appliances, but keeping it at at least 55°C to kill harmful bacteria.

If you want to know how hardness plays out across the Netherlands and what you can practically do about it, read on about hard water in the Netherlands. If you're after taste and less limescale in your glass, filtering limescale from your tap water goes deeper into what a filter does and doesn't change here.

What is still in your Vitens tap water?

This is where it gets interesting, because Vitens is open about it itself. Its water quality page literally states that the company is increasingly finding unwanted substances in its sources, such as PFAS, medicine residues and crop protection products. Vitens calls these emerging substances difficult to purify, and adds that the amount in the drinking water is so low that it remains safe to drink.

That's an honest story, not an alarming one. But it does explain why many people want an extra step.

PFAS: the standard and the guideline value are far apart

For PFAS, the Netherlands has a statutory limit of 100 nanograms per litre. The RIVM also advises a considerably stricter indicative guideline value of 4.4 nanograms per litre, expressed in PFOA equivalents and derived from research by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Water can therefore comfortably meet the legal limit and still be above the health-based guideline value. We explain exactly what PFAS are and why they're called "forever chemicals" in PFAS and forever chemicals. If you want to know straight away which filter technology tackles PFAS, take a look at our water filter against PFAS.

Brown water and disruptions

If brown water comes out of your tap, it's usually iron or manganese that has come loose in the pipe, for example after works or a pressure change. Vitens has a separate page on brown water for this. The advice is generally to let the cold tap run for a few minutes. If you have no water at all, read no tap water, what now for what to do step by step.

Where Vitens stops and your home begins

Vitens supplies water that meets the standards up to your meter. What happens after that depends on your installation. These are the three points where quality can change inside the home:

• Lead pipes: homes built before 1960 may still have lead pipes. According to Milieu Centraal, lead dissolves into the water, especially when it stands still for a long time, and that's risky for babies and young children.
• Standing water: water that stands in your pipe for a night or a holiday picks up more metals from copper, brass or lead. Flushing briefly largely resolves this.
• Hot water: hot tap water sits still for longer in the boiler and has a higher temperature, which makes it easier for substances to dissolve out of the pipe. Why you're better off not making tea with it is explained in drinking hot tap water.

A filter at the end of the chain, meaning under your own worktop, catches exactly this part. That's also the difference with Vitens' purification: that happens kilometres earlier in the chain. If you first want an overview of the different types of water filters, our pillar page is the best starting point.

Vitens versus your own water filter

A water filter is not a replacement for Vitens, but an addition to the last part of the chain. Here's who does what:

Note what's in that last row: less than one cent per litre. For comparison, Milieu Centraal calculates that tap water is almost 150 times cheaper than bottled water, and that the climate impact of one glass of bottled water is comparable to around 70 glasses of tap water. Filtered tap water therefore remains the economical choice on both counts. The full calculation is in tap water versus bottled water.

Do you need a filter in the Vitens area?

No, not because the water would be unsafe. But yes, if you recognise one of these reasons:

• You live in an old building: lead or copper pipes are the strongest argument, especially with young children in the house.
• You're in a hard-water area: less limescale taste in your coffee and tea is immediately noticeable.
• You want to stay below the RIVM guideline value: 4.4 nanograms per litre is stricter than the law requires, and you only achieve that with filtration.
• You're done lugging bottles: a fixed connection saves crates and plastic.

At PureFilter, we see that customers in the Vitens area mainly choose based on taste and the combination with existing appliances. If you have a boiling water tap, bear in mind that it doesn't purify the water; we explain how to combine a water filter with a Quooker by fitting it on the cold water supply. Still torn between a jug, a tap filter and a fixed installation, compare our under-counter water filters against the standalone alternatives.

Frequently asked questions about Vitens water

Conclusion

The water quality of Vitens is demonstrably good: daily samples, testing against the Drinkwaterbesluit and a national compliance rate of 99.9% of measurements. At the same time, Vitens is open about PFAS, medicine residues and crop protection products increasingly appearing in the sources, and the company's responsibility stops at your water meter.

If you want to cover those last few metres too, an under-counter filter is the logical step. The PureFilter Mineral+ filters out more than 100 contaminants and adds calcium, magnesium and potassium back in via Swedish Mineral Rock™, for less than one cent per litre. Water the way it's meant to be, even in the Vitens area.