All a college student needs for a sumptuous feast is some boiling water. This is the essential ingredient for Easy Mac, tea and of course, Raamen noodles. But if you live in an older dorm — or anywhere in Los Angeles — you don’t want to die of lead poisoning. No matter what they try to tell you about the bottled water craze, you can tell them — at least it doesn’t run through lead pipes.

Though the water might come out of the faucet scalding hot — or even just warm enough to mix up some hot coaca — invest in a boiler instead. Immersion boilers, though failure-prone, are cheap, easy and small enough to hide from an RA. Or, just invest in a plastic boiler kettle. They run about $10 and it’ll be gross in less than a semester. But it won’t be as bad as:

Reduced cognitive abilities, or nausea, abdominal pain, irritability, insomnia, metal taste in oral cavity, excess lethargy or hyperactivity, headache and, in extreme cases, seizure and coma.

[via Wikipedia]

(Those things are also caused by alcohol, so try not to get confused.)

Remember this from chemistry?: Heat causes solvents to become aqueous more quickly. They dissolve easier. So, only use hot tap water to wash things or for making baby formula (please don’t take that seriously). And don’t cheat — hot water won’t boil that much faster than the cold. And boiling surely doesn’t remove lead content.

And if you think it’s an old wive’s tail, you can check out my source here.