What do you do during a boil water notice?
Bring clear tap water to a rolling boil for one full minute, cool it, and use that for drinking, cooking, ice, and brushing teeth. Above 5,000 feet, EPA's instruction is three minutes. Showers, laundry, and toilets stay on tap water. If the notice names a chemical rather than germs, do not boil, because boiling can concentrate it. Your utility's own notice governs.
One minute at a rolling boil, then cool
EPA's emergency-disinfection instruction fits in a sentence: bring clear water to a rolling boil for at least one minute, and at altitudes above 5,000 feet, boil it for three. Cool it before use. That water then covers everything the notice restricts, drinking and teeth included.
One caveat sits above every line on this page. The notice from your own utility governs, because utilities write notices against the specific failure they found. Where this page and your notice differ, follow the notice.
A rolling boil is the state where the whole pot churns and does not settle when stirred, and it matters because it confirms the water hit pasteurization temperature. At that temperature, the bacteria, viruses, and parasites a notice is issued for are killed or inactivated. New York's health department explains the link. The same page notes that boiling longer than one minute adds nothing except power demand and scald risk. The ten-minute folklore has no agency behind it.
If the water looks murky, deal with that first. Disinfection works poorly through turbidity, the suspended particles that cloud water, because particles shield microbes from heat and chemicals alike. EPA's instruction: let cloudy water settle, then pour it through a clean cloth, paper towel, or coffee filter before boiling.
When boiling is impossible, EPA publishes a bleach fallback: 8 drops of plain 6 percent household bleach per gallon of water, or 6 drops at 8.25 percent, stirred and left to stand for 30 minutes. Double the dose if the water is cloudy, colored, or very cold. The treated water should carry a slight chlorine smell; if it does not, repeat the dose and wait another 15 minutes. Boiling remains the surer method anywhere a stove or kettle works.
Is there a boil water notice in my area right now?
No national database will reliably tell you whether a boil water notice covers your address; the utility that issued it is the record, and a typical notice runs 24 to 48 hours. Check three places, in order. The utility's website, where an active notice usually appears as a banner or an alerts page. Its phone line. And local news, which utilities use to meet their public-notification duty. If the utility offers text or email alerts, enroll while you are on the site, because the lift announcement travels the same channel.
Your utility's name is printed on the water bill. Renters who never see a bill can ask the landlord, or search the street address plus the words water district.
The 24-to-48-hour figure is New York's health department's, and the same guidance warns an event can stretch to several days or more. The notice lifts on laboratory confirmation, not on the repair. The utility has to correct the underlying failure, then wait for lab results to confirm the water is again safe to drink, and bacterial cultures need time to grow. That lab step is why a notice can outlast the visible fix by a day or two.
Until the lift is announced, treat the notice as active. Water can look, smell, and taste completely normal while carrying exactly the contamination the notice was issued for.
What still runs on tap water, and what needs the kettle?
Toilets flush on ordinary tap water through an entire boil water notice, laundry runs as usual, and healthy adults can shower with care, all per CDC's advisory guidance. The boiled-or-bottled rule covers whatever ends up in a mouth: drinking, cooking, coffee and every other prepared drink, ice, baby formula, toothbrushing, and rinsing any produce eaten raw. That split, swallowing versus contact, sorts nearly every task in a house.
CDC's guidance during any advisory is not to drink or use water from appliances connected to the water line, and it names the fridge and freezer water and ice dispensers specifically. Boil the tap water even if it has already passed through a home filter or a filter pitcher. Most household filters are built for taste and chemistry, not microbes, and New York's health department says outright not to rely on in-home treatment units during a boil water event.
For infants, CDC's first choice during an advisory is ready-to-use formula, which needs no water at all. Where powder is the only option, mix it with boiled-and-cooled or bottled water, never straight tap.
In the shower, the whole job is keeping water out of mouths. That is easy for healthy adults and hard for small children, which is why CDC suggests sponge baths for babies and young kids. New York's guidance adds a narrower caution: people with open wounds, recent surgical sites, or weakened immune systems should wash with boiled-and-cooled or bottled water instead.
| Task | Water to use | The detail that matters |
|---|---|---|
| Drinking and cooking | Boiled and cooled, or bottled | Includes coffee, tea, and every prepared drink |
| Ice | Boiled and cooled, or bottled | Dump ice made since the notice began; skip the fridge dispenser |
| Baby formula | Boiled and cooled, or bottled | Ready-to-use formula is CDC's first choice during an advisory |
| Brushing teeth | Boiled and cooled, or bottled | Never un-boiled tap water, filtered or not |
| Washing raw produce | Boiled and cooled, or bottled | Anything eaten uncooked gets rinsed with safe water |
| Filtered tap (pitcher or fridge) | Boil it anyway | Home filters are not designed to remove pathogens |
| Showering and bathing | Tap water, with care | Do not swallow; sponge-bathe babies; open wounds or weak immune systems use boiled or bottled |
| Laundry | Tap water | Dry clothes fully; turbidity can discolor whites |
| Toilet flushing | Tap water | No restriction unless the notice says do not use |
Compiled from CDC advisory guidance and New York State Department of Health boil-water FAQs. Your own utility's notice governs where it differs.
Do not drink and do not use: the advisories where boiling fails
CDC sorts drinking water advisories into three grades, and boiling only answers the first. A boil water advisory means germs, and boiling kills them. A do not drink advisory means chemicals or toxins: use bottled water for drinking and cooking, because boiling water that contains harmful chemicals will not make it safe. A do not use advisory means the water is unsafe even to touch, so bottled covers everything.
The reason is mechanical. Boiling kills living things and removes nothing else. EPA's emergency guidance is explicit that neither boiling nor bleach will destroy heavy metals, salts, or most other chemicals. Boiling can actually raise the dose. New York's health department, writing for public health professionals, describes two routes: concentration, because the water leaves as steam while the dissolved chemical stays behind in a smaller volume, and volatilization, the chemical boiling off into the air of the room where you stand breathing. The same guidance rules out boiling for grossly contaminated water, raw sewage or heavy murk, because the particle load shields microbes from the heat.
Nitrate, the fertilizer- and septic-derived contaminant common in farm-country wells, is the textbook case. Minnesota's health department states plainly that boiling water will make nitrate more concentrated. A nitrate problem calls for a different water source or reverse osmosis, the membrane filtration method, never the kettle.
So read the notice's verb before reaching for a pot. If it says boil, boil. If it says do not drink or do not use, the stove has no role, and the notice will say what does.
After the lift: five minutes per cold tap, three batches of ice
When a boil water notice lifts, run every cold-water faucet on full for at least five minutes each before drinking from it. That step, straight from New York State's homeowner guidance, clears the water that sat in your own plumbing through the event, and a long or complicated service connection, an apartment building's for instance, warrants a longer flush.
The rest of the checklist works outward from the taps. Automatic ice makers: dump the existing ice, make and discard three batches to flush the feed line, five batches if that line runs more than 20 feet, and wipe the bin with disinfectant. Anything holding a tank or plumbed straight into the line, the water heater, a water cooler, an in-line filter, gets enough water run through it to replace one full volume, and a filter near the end of its life gets replaced instead of flushed. A water softener runs a regeneration cycle, its built-in self-rinse. A reverse osmosis unit gets fresh pre-filters and a look at the owner's manual.
The flushing traces straight back to why notices exist. New York's health department describes the trigger as an unexpected condition creating the potential for biological contamination, most often a loss of pressure in the distribution system or a loss of disinfection, downstream of a main break, a treatment disruption, a power outage, or a flood. Whatever entered the lines while pressure was down can still be standing in your pipes after the mains run clean, and five minutes at full flow is what pushes it out.
Where do I start?
- Bring clear water to a rolling boil for one full minute, then let it cool; above 5,000 feet, make it three minutes.
- Read the notice's exact wording first; if it says do not drink or do not use, boiling is the wrong response.
- Stop using the refrigerator's water and ice dispensers, and dump any ice made since the notice began.
- Set a covered pot of cooled boiled water by each sink so nobody brushes teeth or rinses produce from the tap out of habit.
- Sign up for your utility's alerts or check its website daily; most notices lift within 24 to 48 hours.
Common questions
How do I find out if my area has a boil water notice?
There is no dependable national lookup; the issuing utility is the record. Check the utility's website for a banner or alerts page, call its phone line, or watch local news, which utilities use for required public notification. The utility's name is on your water bill. Once a notice is out, assume it stays active until the utility announces the lift, typically within 24 to 48 hours.
Can I brush my teeth during a boil water notice?
Not with straight tap water. CDC's instruction is to brush with boiled-and-cooled or bottled water only, and never with tap water that has not been boiled. The rule exists because brushing puts tap water directly in your mouth. A labeled jug of cooled boiled water on the bathroom counter beats memory, since a toothbrush under the running tap is one of the most automatic movements in the house.
Does a filter pitcher or fridge filter make the water safe?
No. CDC says to boil tap water even when it has passed through a home filter or filter pitcher, and New York's health department goes further: do not rely on in-home treatment units during a boil water event, because most are not designed to remove pathogens. Carbon pitchers and refrigerator filters are taste-and-chemistry tools. Boil the filtered water, or use bottled.
Why do boil water notices happen after storms and main breaks?
Because both can drop the pressure that keeps contamination out. A pressurized main pushes outward through every joint and crack; when a break, a power outage at the plant, or a flood drops that pressure, soil water and whatever it carries can seep inward instead. New York's health department lists pressure loss, loss of disinfection, and unexpected water-quality problems as the standard triggers, with the notice standing until lab tests clear the water.
Sources cited on this page
Every number on this guide page traces to one of the 5 sources below: 5 government or regulatory.
Government & regulatory
- US EPA, Emergency Disinfection of Drinking Water (boil and bleach instructions; updated February 2026)
- CDC, Drinking Water Advisories: An Overview (advisory types and use rules; reviewed March 2024)
- New York State Department of Health, Boil Water Notices: Frequently Asked Questions for Residents and Homeowners
- New York State Department of Health, Boil Water Response: Information for the Public Health Professional
- Minnesota Department of Health, Nitrate in Drinking Water (boiling concentrates nitrate)
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