Learn the Facts About bottled water

[brickwood]

Is drinking RO/DI safe. It all depends who you ask. There are many arguments for both sides. Some people say that drinking di water will cause osmotic shock, which is where the water is so pure that it starts stripping important minerals from your own cells in the body. From what I have read and been told, there are only a few cases of this being true. One of the other arguments for ro/di water is that is a breeding ground for bacteria and to make the ro system drinkable a uv filter should be used as well. It all depends who u talk to. The company I worked for would never sell a di system for drinking water. They were a four stage system consisting of 1 and 5 micron filters and a carbon. I am no expert but I hear these questions all the time. I do agree about not using bottled water. It is a waste. Buy an ro system.

[Chowder]

Whats wrong with drinking tap water?

[new but handy]

Originally Posted by Chowder

Whats wrong with drinking tap water?

Drinking tap water is fine if you live in an area with good water. When I lived in Van the water was great. Now I live here. Our water has tds of 210-220 when it is good. A lot of the time we have boil water advisorys on (spring and fall)

[fishoholic]

I live in the City and drink tap water all the time. However if I lived somewhere were the tap water wasn't safe to drink or tasted gross, I would drink bottled.

[Chase31]

i see no reason why you cant drink tap water, as using a RO is alot of waste

Originally Posted by Chowder

Whats wrong with drinking tap water?

Darn beat me to it!

[Ron99]

Originally Posted by brickwood

Is drinking RO/DI safe. It all depends who you ask. There are many arguments for both sides. Some people say that drinking di water will cause osmotic shock, which is where the water is so pure that it starts stripping important minerals from your own cells in the body. From what I have read and been told, there are only a few cases of this being true. One of the other arguments for ro/di water is that is a breeding ground for bacteria and to make the ro system drinkable a uv filter should be used as well. It all depends who u talk to. The company I worked for would never sell a di system for drinking water. They were a four stage system consisting of 1 and 5 micron filters and a carbon. I am no expert but I hear these questions all the time. I do agree about not using bottled water. It is a waste. Buy an ro system.

This has been debated many times. Drinking RO/DI water is perfectly safe as there really isn't much difference between water at 10 TDI or less like we have in the Vancouver area and zero TDI. You get your minerals from your food, not your water. But many people don't like the taste so that is why coconut carbon filters and such are added at the end to add some minerals back in for taste.

[Skimmerking]

Try drinking Brandon water 850 TDS hmmmmmmm your getting more then minerals here. like the fish with 3 eyes and 6 fins

[FitoPharmer]

This is what I have been told on drinking pure water:
Drinking tap or filtered water, does not have any direct impact on your mineral/vitamin uptake unless you are drinking good "mineral water". Even then intake is minimal, plus most people do not use mineral waters as any kind of significant nutrient uptake anyways. So drinking really pure water would only have an effect on your body at the excessive side of the scale. Pure water will make water intoxication, or Hyponatremia develop faster.
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/5/f/blwaterintox.htm

P.S.
RO/DI coffee IMO tastes way better.
and i'm not sure on this, but in my mind since your drinking water is also powering your bodies waste filtering systems that the purest water will help it work better. I.E. ~1 TDS can absorb more toxins then +100 TDS water.

[Ron99]

Originally Posted by asmodeus

Try drinking Brandon water 850 TDS hmmmmmmm your getting more then minerals here. like the fish with 3 eyes and 6 fins

That sounds like a really cool fish for the reef. Where can I get one

Originally Posted by RCFA

The most prevalent is chloroform (trichloromethane), a THM which is carcinogenic to rats and mice.

True but maybe not true too You have to also look at the levels of things like chloroform in the water. Simply having some present is not necessarily dangerous. You have to ask how much is there in the water? How much is then absorbed by your digestive tract? How much is then inactivated by first pass metabolism in your liver? How quickly is it excreted by your kidneys? And of course how much was required to give rats cancer? Cholorform is fairly volatile too so if you use a Brita for example and then have the water sitting in the Brita in the fridge a good portion of any chloroform would probably evaporate out of the water. Toxicology is complicated and you can't simply say there is some chloroform in our drinking water and it will cause cancer.

Originally Posted by FitoPharmer

This is what I have been told on drinking pure water:
Drinking tap or filtered water, does not have any direct impact on your mineral/vitamin uptake unless you are drinking good "mineral water". Even then intake is minimal, plus most people do not use mineral waters as any kind of significant nutrient uptake anyways. So drinking really pure water would only have an effect on your body at the excessive side of the scale. Pure water will make water intoxication, or Hyponatremia develop faster.
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/5/f/blwaterintox.htm

P.S.
RO/DI coffee IMO tastes way better.
and i'm not sure on this, but in my mind since your drinking water is also powering your bodies waste filtering systems that the purest water will help it work better. I.E. ~1 TDS can absorb more toxins then +100 TDS water.

I still think you would have to drink a heck of alot of RO/DI water to suffer water intoxication. As for helping your bodies waste filtering I have to say probably not. Once the water is absorbed it goes into your blood where it basically mixes with all the minerals /proteins etc. in your blood anyhow. It is the blood that is then filtered by liver and kidneys etc. Drinking RO/DI water will not affect your blood chemistry or composition so would not have any effect on your bodies ability to remove waste or toxins.

[RCFA]

Originally Posted by Ron99

True but maybe not true too You have to also look at the levels of things like chloroform in the water. Simply having some present is not necessarily dangerous. You have to ask how much is there in the water? How much is then absorbed by your digestive tract? How much is then inactivated by first pass metabolism in your liver? How quickly is it excreted by your kidneys? And of course how much was required to give rats cancer? Cholorform is fairly volatile too so if you use a Brita for example and then have the water sitting in the Brita in the fridge a good portion of any chloroform would probably evaporate out of the water. Toxicology is complicated and you can't simply say there is some chloroform in our drinking water and it will cause cancer.

Very True. I did not mean to say that you will DEFINITLY get cancer from not filtering your drinking water. I only wanted to convey that I believe that dinking tap water is perfectly safe and the only thing that I protect against is chlorination by-products. The levels of which are 99% of the time way below acceptable levels and in some cases not even detectable. But as we are not apprised of the amounts of chlorine being introduced into our water on a daily basis, periods with elevated levels of organics in the water supply require higher concentrations of Chlorine to be added to achieve acceptable levels of disinfection. This CAN cause the THM levels in our water supply to increase. It is a very complex issue and there is a wealth of good and even more bad information out there on drinking water safety. Here's a link if you want to learn everything you could ever want to know. Take things for what they are worth and do your own research from reputable sources before you believe something some anonymous person tells you on some website!

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ewh-semt/pubs.../index-eng.php