On tap: Do you drink water from a filter or the faucet?

IT'S not that Evelyn McNinch thinks there's anything wrong, exactly, with the water from the tap in her Burlingame home.

It's just that she prefers it from her Brita water filter pitcher.

"The water tastes bad," says the seven-year devotee of the system. "It tastes kinda thick. From the filter, it tastes fresher."

One-third of Americans drink water filtered by in-home systems that range from $18 pitchers to thousands of dollars worth of whole- house filtration systems, according to a survey conducted by the Water Quality Association, an industry group. Another 23 percent of people use ...