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Human consumption of deionized water, page 2

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We have been using DI water at our job to make coffee for about the past year and a half and were curious if DI water was bad for you. We stumbled upon this site for some answers and it seems like everyone is also curious too. The only reason we use the DI water is because the tap is closer than going to the water fountain and getting water. This seems to be a highly debatable topic. I think some scientific research needs to be conducted on this. A lot have talked about no short term effects but what happens in 15 to 20 years. Could this cause kidney failure or cancer? Just something to think about. I think we may switch over regular tap water.

Roger Westerberg
- Charleston, South Carolina

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+++++++ I would like to point out that deionized water, demineralized water, and distilled water are NOT all the same. In fact these words refer to the process by which they are produced, and not a specific characteristic or purity. Based on the specific process or equipment used to produce any one of them, the purity will vary. Water that has gone thru a process that removed ALL other components is referred to as deionized. Within the context of high purity water, this water would be more pure than that that has been made by distillation or demineralization. However, it would not be uncommon to hear someone say that the have "deionized water" just because they have passed tap water thru a deionization bed. I believe this is the main reason for the wide range of responses. I think that the original question of whether deionized water is harmful to drink was based on the highest purity deionized water. Distilled and demineralized water do not have that very high purity level,so experience with those waters is not pertinent to the original question. The question of what is best for health is another question. I think that some of the bad experiences that people have had may well have been caused by improperly operated or maintained equipment that was producing the water. I have not seen results of any study done on drinking exclusively very high purity water. Don Gregurich - Madison, Wisconsin +++++++ What happened to John Smith? John Smith from Riverside, California left a post on May 24th, 2006. He said that he will start using DI water to make tea. What happened to him? Is he still alive? :) Kolyas [last name deleted for privacy by Editor] - Orlando, Florida And his fate is still unlearned (poor old John Smith) D.I. in his tea fix, since two thousand and six, he's the man who never returned (with apologies to The Kingston Trio) Ted Mooney, P.E. finishing.com Brick, New Jersey

De-ionizers on eBay

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I've read several comments that tap water is safe, but I've worked in water toxicology and sewage treatment for many years and can state with tap water is only safe to a certain degree and under certain circumstances.

If your tap water is recycled sewage water, it will contain contaminants that sewage treatment cannot remove such as pharmaceutical drugs that come through urine among others. These contaminants are too costly to remover from public water supplies and are not tested for for regulation purposes.

Your tap water will likely be fairly safe relative to bacteria and heavy metals in most of the U.S.

Chlorine is not safe to drink or shower in. Most people absorb as much chlorine bathing as they do drinking tap water. Filtered tap water does not remove all chlorine.

Spring water from known, uncontaminated sources would probably be best, but bottled water is not tested as vigorously as city water even, so it's hard to know without doing your own extensive research and testing.

Which leads me back to deionized water. I use deionized water that I remineralize with minerals taken from an ancient sea bed. But who knows, it could contain too much lead! Or the extraction machines could contaminated it with VOCs...

Plastic bottled water contains dioxins -- another modern nightmare.

Bottom line is that it's tough to live, eat, sleep and poop in the same place and not get contaminated. We live in our own garbage dumps essentially.

I used to identify homes in Florida with wells built next to "cattle dipping" troughs that were filled with arsenic at one time. Families, especially kids, would get extremely ill and have no idea why because glass and weeds had grown over the dipping tanks by then. The ground permeability if Florida is very high.

If I could get safe spring water in glass bottles, that would be best I think. Fresh, clean, "living water" is best.

For now, I usually use remineralized deionized water and have had no problem health problems from this approach. Many minerals are essential to health, and it has been demonstrated that people who live in places with hard water (like the mountains) generally have lower incidence of heart disease. Much of the farm land, and therefore vegetables and animals, is depleted of key minerals and trace minerals that have unknown effects on health when consuming products from this soil.

If you can't afford to remineralized deionized water, I would NOT drink it. Even taking a mineral complex will not cover all the trace elements that are essential in very small quantities.

One more thing about tap water. The chlorine kills bacteria; the bad AND the good. That will lead to stomach problems because good stomach health depends on a BALANCE of "good" and "bad" bacteria. The best protection against illness is a strong supply of "good" digestive track microflora. They kill the "bad" ones. Antibiotics often kill the "good" and "bad," leaving a dangerous state where reinfection or illness can occur if the "good" bacteria are not replenished properly.

Steven Sauder
hobbyist - Spokane, Washington

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+++++++ I found this thread interesting because in my search I have not been able to find anything very convincing on either side of the argument about consumption of DI water. I am a chemist at a community college and drink our DI water daily, despite warnings that it will deplete my system of vital nutrients. I understand the theory behind the leaching of minerals from our bodies to replace what is lacking in the water, but biochemically it doesn't make sense to me. I would think that the chemical composition of the water would be altered almost immediately either due to the presence of chyme in our stomachs or, in the case of an empty stomach, due to the chemical nature of our digestive juices. I would be so interested to hear a nutritionist's or biochemist's take on this topic. Does anyone have a chemical explanation of the processes that occur upon ingestion of DI water? Thank you, Margherita Margherita Smith Education - Paso Robles, California Ed. note: We also have another thread on the same topic, letter 15665.

Water Treatment: Principles and Design

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They say DI water is good. Can some give light to this article
http://english.pravda.ru/science/health/24-10-2006/85185-water-0

Bhasker Sharma
student - Kolkata, WB, India

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I must say it certainly interesting following this thread over the past few years. My understanding is that the risk with DI water is that it flows freely into cells, then pulls in nutrients so quickly through osmosis that the cell essentially bursts. In large amounts this could be a real problem, in small amounts it is probably no big deal. Moderation. Now that's my understanding of the risk...In reality, DI water may be altered very quickly in the digestive tract and blood that it simply doesn't have this effect on the cells.

I've just added this site to my favorites bin.

Brett Gardner
- Folsom, California

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Thanks for your insight, Brett, as well as the kind words.

Ted Mooney, P.E. finishing.com Brick, New Jersey

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Does DI water have a specific pH? Mine is reading 10.68 which seems a little high. We are using this in a science lab. What is an acceptable pH?

Bronwyn Duncan
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

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+++++++ Is deionized water safe to inhale? I am not even going to act like I know anything about this subject. I have not researched the subject much before posting my question but I run a medical equipment and supply company and I was just asked this question by a patient's family member. That, of course has brought me to the beginning of my research and thought while I was researching myself I could be waiting for answers from you folks who seem to be well educated in the subject. I thank you all for any information you could send my way. Thanks, Shari Kinyon healthcare industry - Salt Lake City, Utah

Free subscription to Water Quality Products for qualified readers:

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Bronwyn,

DI water has a pH of 7.00 ±.05, as pure water, by definition, has a pH of 7. Since DI water is *almost* pure, it should be close to 7. A pH of 10 to 11 would be like hand soap or ammonia. So, either your DI water is contaminated or your pH meter is not calibrated properly (probably the latter). Any good pH meter should give a pH very near 7.00 when measuring DI water. Those meters have calibration fluids that you get from the manufacture for the purpose of calibrating them. You can also verify this with a simple litmus test to eliminate the water as the problem. So check those out. Another issue with some electrode pH meters is that chemically pure water, like DI, has no ions (hence its name), and thus produces no EMF across the electrode (they become insulated), so the meter can give unpredictable results.

I used to work in a medical laboratory and we would actually use our in house DI water to do quick (and "dirty") calibrations of our pH meters for our HPLC instruments.

Hope that answers your question, and sorry for the tangents.

To everyone else,

Back to the main thread. In the medical lab I worked in, we were also told not to drink the DI water. Mostly because of cost. It is very expensive to maintain a reliable tap source of DI water in a building. The other reason is the UNPREDICTABLE health issue that may be caused but drinking said water. This also eliminates them from liability if you do get sick 20 years down the road after drinking water that came from their system. From a chemistry standpoint, the leaching of minerals in the body is definitely plausible and has been observed in laboratory animals and human subjects. You must be very careful when drinking DI water if you choose to waste your money. You have to be sure that you are intaking those electrolytes through food or other means that would normally be in the water.

In response to a few people who have raised the question of "Even if the water does leach minerals they are still in your body right?" Not true. Name one excreted fluid from the human body that is pure water. None. All excreted fluids from the body contain electrolytes or salts (Urine, sweat, tears etc.) Unless you replace those excreted minerals, you can develop an electrolyte imbalance which can lead to all sorts of uncomfortable symptoms and even death.

That's said, why go through all the trouble? Just find the cleanest spring water you can and drink it. The bottom line is that there hasn't been enough research on human subject either way to confirm any sort of conclusion on this matter. We may have to wait awhile until "ordinary" water sources become scarce enough that wide spread desalination and demineralization of non-potable water occurs. Then, perhaps, more research will be done.

Eric Lane
- Los Angeles, California

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+++++++ Regarding pH of DI water, my understanding is that by definition it has no pH. This is because pH is effectively a measure of the extent to which the molecules of water are disassociated into ions. That only occurs in the presence of salt/base ions. DI water has had it's ions removed (QED) ergo, no actual measurement of pH is valid. An experiment using a very clean pH probe can show that DI water exposed to the atmosphere will be very erratic, then stabilize, and slowly drop, due to the formation of very low levels of carbonic acid, as atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed..hope this response from a biologist can be endorsed or corrected by a chemist? Aaron Fielder pharmaceuticals - Melbourne, Victoria, Australia +++++++ I am a mechanical engineer and by no means a biologist but we use both Deionized and distilled water in out facility I have witnessed the "Leaching" properties on DI water as opposed to distilled water in our systems. The DI water corrodes the hard piping (steel, copper, brass, stainless steel etc...) causing buildup in out closed loop system and raising the conductivity of our water system (which is critical to our process) and is recommended only to be ran in PVC piping. The distilled water seems to be harmless to the piping, though we have only been using it for a relatively short period of time (about two years). As far as being safe to drink the "industrial grade" we use is not suitable to drink because of contaminates left in the water in the deionizing process, however I am in the process of building a new home and one of the most prestigious upgrades is a whole home Reverse Osmosis system (A.K.A. Deionized Water). Roland Rodriguez - Houston Texas 1     2     3     4 ANSWER or FOLLOW UP POST an unrelated QUESTION HOT Topics