Ultra-pure water can kill you

boing
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There are two claims here:

  1. That demineralized water doesn’t contain minerals necessary for health. The study you linked to supports this idea and I don’t think anyone can argue otherwise. You won’t get your minerals from demineralized water, but you also won’t get them from soft tap water.

  2. That demineralized water “leaches minerals for your body” and is dangerous to drink, which is the claim made in the video. Your tonicity argument still doesn’t address that the difference between demineralized water and soft tap water is negligible compared to body fluids. If drinking pure water has a detrimental effect on health, then so does drinking soft tap water.

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So - this seems to be the most authorative source I’ve found so far, from the World Helath Organisation

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientschap12.pdf

Interestingly:

  • There’s one documented case of a baby raised on melted snow water (essentially equivalent to distilled water) who suffered a brain odema due to insufficient magnesium
  • Rats that are given deionized water for a full year develop a measurable decrease in their bone mineralisation density (versus a control group on ‘normal’ water and the same diet)
  • When deionized water is distributed on a large scale (e.g. from desalination plants), the initially mineral free water scavenges metal ions from pipework, which can cause the deionized water to become toxic, even though ‘normal’ water flowing through the same pipework does not
  • People who live in areas with naturally low levels of Mg2+ and Ca2+ in their drinking water are statistically more likely to die from heart attacks (mineral ions being important for muscle function)

“can kill” is a stretch, but it seems that there are measurable health effects.

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Fatigue happens. It’s a matter of time when the same-class lapse happens to me. :stuck_out_tongue:

(Painting? Ohhh! I do only metal-glass art myself but paintings are nice too.)

As of water, I don’t think the tonicity matters much. A soft rainwater is pretty much the same as ultrapure water in this regard; the difference between these two is negligible, nutrition-wise.

As danegeld said, however, highly pure water is a very aggressive solvent, leaching stuff from everything it comes in contact with. (So after some level of purity it has to be distilled in fused-silica apparatus as it would leach alkali out of ordinary glasses.) The metals leached from the pipes and the brazing alloys and all other hardware around then can be rather annoying.

The crucial issue here is the net intake of important minerals. Some will always get excreted. These have to be replenished, and it does not matter if they come dissolved in water or present in food.

What I would say is that if we don’t count the effect of the metal dissolving effect of ultrapure water, such water is a dietary equivalent of rainwater or melted snow. At the first contact with saliva it becomes far less than ultrapure anyway.

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Honestly, thank you. That looks like some good information and I’ll be reading it carefully.

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Yes, painting - by myself, in more heat and humidity than I would choose to. I then helped a neighbor move furniture. Also, since I now have to disclose this for you to get why I might know something about all this: I happen to be an epileptic who doesn’t respond well to heat. So, you might want to drop the snark!!! I’m freaking exhausted today. (Happy with yourself?)

I’ll repeat it one final time — drinking enough pure water to just keep your fluids up in a normal health situation holds little health risk, but not all people are in normal health situations. David Rees was discussing the risk of ingesting pure water and it sapping your electrolytes. I’m an example of someone who can’t afford to have that happen. Why not? I take an anticonvulsant that already saps my saline. So, for just that one reason, I can’t add another substance into my diet that will further imbalance my electrolytes (I already snack on olives as a way to balance things out when I get zonked).

Some people have a REAL CONCERN about pushing their already imbalanced systems further out of balance. You may be a happy, healthy person — but not everyone is so freaking lucky.

Now - back on to the question of tonicity, and “is it a real concern?” It’s definitely a real concern. I already noted, that it required,"a very large quantity or extreme situation, like extreme dehydration from activity or a major illness to bring on these effects to a noticeable degree"and you just glossed over that. You seriously don’t get that the problems being discussed here aren’t “everyday/everyman” issues. Here’s the thing, you can take on pure water in ways other than ingestion, and those ways definitely can kill you - even if you’re healthy.

Have a read from this thread about nurses wondering if sterile water a hypotonic solution that would cause cell rupture. Spoiler: it is.

http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/sterile-water-364415.html

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Yuck.

None intended. I tried to be friendly and this is what I get. I was primed by reading something else (drying oils related, and got sidetracked to art pigments) to think about oil paints in art. Adequate explanation?

The couple milligrams that are in (soft) tapwater vs aren’t in ultrapure water just CAN NOT make that much difference.

Deeper examination follows; I am using calcium and magnesium as a proxy for all other ions, as it was easier to find and interpret the data.

A Table 3.2 here, on page 46, lists the ranges of magnesium and calcium in waters worldwide. Let’s go for the lower mineralization; the spring water listed there has median content of 6 mg/l of calcium and 3 mg/l of magnesium. (Other waters have higher content and can be a significant source. Over all samples, the ranges are 0…575 mg/l for Ca and 0…128 mg/l for Mg - results pretty much wall to wall.)

The variations are rather wide, over two orders of magnitude.

Table 2.1 on page 19 lists for a 19-50 years old female the adequate intake of calcium to 1000 mg/day, and recommended dietary allowance of magnesium to 310 mg/day,

Three liters (say it’s the day intake) of said median spring water therefore contribute only 18 mg of Ca and 9 mg of Mg, providing some puny 1.8 and 2.9%, respectively. Not a big difference of what is in some areas a common drinking water in comparison with a distilled water; I’d dare to call the difference “negligible”.

You’ll get way more difference in dietary intake of minerals, which I assume is your concern, by drinking local water in a different city, and can even get negligibly close, dietary-wise, to said ultrapure water.

As of tonicity, a tap/bottled water will be always hypotonic, and as the Table 3.2 shows, often grossly so. Isotonic saline is 9 mg of NaCl per liter; I am not certain about conversions to other ions but it will still be a good order of magnitude above even the most mineralized waters listed.

I am not disputing that. For drinking water, however, tonicity does not play an important role as anything you can get is way way below isotonic.

I therefore pose a claim that a natural, low-mineral spring water can be considered equivalent, dietary-wise, to distilled/demineralized water, and the differences are only marginal.

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I accept the explanation, and we’re cool. I was mainly responding to, “Fatigue happens.” which seriously does read as snark.

I’m going to close my end by saying that I think you’re conflating two ideas: purified water (like people already do use for drinking), and ultrapurified water (as is used in labs). They aren’t the same thing, and the more pure the water gets, the more of a problem it is for your system to bring it into balance.

Soft rainwater isn’t the same as ultra pure water. It’s low mineral, but not that low (it does have sodium). Also, pollution in some areas can add particulates to rainwater droplets as they form. Acid rain is an example of that.

Laboratories don’t just use one source of water. They have water for their experiments, and then potable water, and then waste water for irrigation outside and cooling equipment. Here’s a brochure depicting how complicated setting up water for a modern lab can be.

Take a look at what this manual for an ultra pure filtration system says to use their water for:
• Analytical techniques in laboratories
• Reagent and solution preparation
• Water for high-purity rinsing in laboratories

They don’t suggest it be used for drinking. The source water is described as “drinking water”. You may also want to compare the counts on this water to that found in standard drinking water - of any type.

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As of fatigue happens, I use it as a dry (ultradry) statement of fact. Having a bigger share of that state than I’d like, docs cannot figure out why. It is not so catastrophical to be a major issue, but it sucks anyway. So fewer things get done but more documentaries are watched and books/articles read, to give it a silver lining. It is also a good motivation to design safety into instruments I play with, as fatigue invites mistakes and it is always better when the capacitor gets auto-discharged before I stick my grubby paws into the enclosure, instead of relying on manual safety and operator’s discipline (the sound whenever you believe a stupid mistake is below you is Murphy laughing). Or when other easily preventable mishaps are prevented. Certainly a factor in why I lasted this long.

As a chemist, though not in active duty now, I am well-familiar with the degrees of water purity. The one used in semiconductor manufacture can be considered the best of the best. I didn’t work with semiconductors but I am familiar with the processes and purity requirements theoretically and they are insane, for both water and air.
(There was even a case when in Ireland the municipiality used a fertilizer instead of the usual salt for deicing roads, and it impacted the Intel plant as their purification systems could not cope.)

(The first document from you does not deal with high-purity water, beyond few notes about reverse osmosis, but it was interesting anyway, hence the response delay. Deals more with the high-volume systems in large facilities. Somewhat similar to factories and process plants in this regard; I sort of consult for one smaller factory so may even be useful beyond just satisfying curiosity.
The second one is also interesting. It’s fairly logical they don’t suggest the water for drinking; it is too expensive for such use. They also don’t mention it is not suitable for drinking, which they in these overlawyered days would if there would be even a shade of danger.)

The ion content in ultrapure water is just a notch lower than in “ordinary” distilled water. On the dietary intake balance sheet, it brings in only a tiny bit less minerals (zero, instead of tiny bit) than distilled water.

So dietary-wise, from certain level down the increasing purity does not matter; the physiological effects will scale linearly with diminishing impurities. Cost-wise, however, it scales far from linear; you pay a significant premium for each further “nine” of purity, and even a speck of dust then can ruin a batch. (Hence the different levels in the labs, and not using more pure than necessary - this applies to all chemicals due to the purity-cost scaling.)

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From an ex lab-rat’s PoV, I’d love to see how that stuff stacks up against some of the really high-end Mass Spec and UHPLC reagents. Either way, it’s well into crazy levels of purity and makes standard RO look like swamp-water. :smiley:

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I am severely disappointed in this news. If you put water in a plastic bottle (without showing me) for a few hours and then pour it into a glass, I’ll be able to taste the plastic.

I can tell what kind of pipes you have if I drink your tap water. I hate mineral water because it tastes terrible (usually like it’s been sitting in copper pipes) to me. I don’t know what “minerals” they’re putting in them but I’m pretty sure it’s copper pipes.

I’ve had a dream of double distilling my own water so I never have to taste whatever wretched crap is going on with bottled and tap water. Now y’all tell me it’s gonna hurt me. Can’t I just put like a half teaspoon of sodium, magnesium, potassium, zinc (? I forget all the electrolytes) and calcium (none of which (except the sodium) I think is particularly tasteable?) in a litre or two and call it even?

I’m just going to drink tea for the rest of my life so I don’t have to taste the terrible water.

In other news, what’s the obsession with Portland’s tap water? I know supposedly people pee in it sometimes and sometimes there are dead animals in it. Why is it a metric in this discussion? x_x

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I stumbled across a response to the WHO report that danegeld linked to:

http://www.cyber-nook.com/water/DistilledWaterWHO.htm

It won’t win any design awards, but it’s a good and seemingly unbiased site for water information. The WHO report seems to have some problems. A couple:

  • The case of the baby fed melted snow came from a report that actually concluded that too much liquid of any kind – tap water, dilute formula, juice – can lead to hyponatremia. It did not address distilled water.
  • Those rats were given deionized water intravenously. We’re talking about drinking water, not shooting it up.

The Canadian Water Quality Association, which is a nonprofit, also takes issue with the WHO report:

http://www.cwqa.com/_faq/misinformation.inc.pdf

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Specs for semiconductor-grades here:
http://www.arieswater.com/Uploads/arieswater/Documents/Technical%20Papers/Water%20Purification%20Standards.pdf

Partial specs for HPLC-grade water here:

I did not manage to find anything relevant to mass spectrometry solvent water purity in a reasonable amount of time.

Looks like the E-1 semicond grade is a rough match for the HPLC Type 1 grade, with the E-1 having about an order of magnitude lower content in the listed ions and matching total organic carbon. E-2 and E-3 are even more clean. (Tenths of ppb of contaminants. Not even conductivity analysis can find a difference, they are all 18.2 MΩ.cm as the ions are too few to compete with the water dissociation ones.)

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Thanks for that. Fascinating (well, to me anyway!) stuff. Appreciate it. :smiley:
Just as an FYI, the UHPLC/MS grade I’ve used was something along these lines. Haven’t tasted it, though. :wink:

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It is a fascinating stuff. (Few things aren’t, when you get beyond certain depth.) And useful.

I never worked with (U)HPLC/MS, but got my hands on GC-MS for a while. Sweet toy, wouldn’t mind having it at home!

And I don’t think you could recognize the water from ordinary distilled water, unless you have an audiophile-ear equivalent of a tongue. :smiley:

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Portland Oregon’s tap water had the lowest Calcium and Magnesium concentrations in a table covering the 25 largest US cities I happened to find via Google.

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The body maintains it water balance and blood pressure using a number of overlapping mechanisms. The kidneys have various active transport mechanisms to keep the concentration of each solute in a narrow range. Sickness like diabetes causes you piss ketones which the kidneys should be scavenging from the blood. Lack of protein during starvation causes the swollen bellies of edema. Kidney failure makes you piss the albumin out of your blood, and your urine sample will look like orange juice with pulp.

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Proof of what? Diffusion? That solids cross membranes from high to low concentration? Your fingers aren’t broken man. You’re asking me to prove basic physics and biochemistry, if i read you correctly. All the answers offered to you, batted down without those beloved specifics of yours.

please, tear down one of those papers. Enough handwaving at things you disagree with.

Do you even science?

No, you keep changing the subject, and then ask if I am the troll? Sure. okay.

Google: Sir Issac Newton, pray for an epiphany, and thank me later.

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Ummmm… it is water that crosses the membrane, the ions won’t get through.

Edit: You may also like to check my numbers in an earlier post where I list the concentrations of ions (Ca/Mg only, as proxies for all the others which will behave in a similar way). The difference between a soft tap water and an ultrapure one is somewhat negligible.

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