At my local hardware store they sell something called “Demineralised Water High Purity” and on the back of the packaging it says something like, “If consumed, rinse out mouth immediately with clean water.”
Why is it dangerous if it’s cleaner water?
In: Chemistry
Because it’s not “potable”, or rated for human consumption, like cat food.
Demineralised water is mineral deficient, we need minerals. It’s also better at leeching contaminants from the material it’s, usually plastic, container is made out of. If it’s been stored for years in a bottle that may not have been sterilised correctly there’s a chance something may have grown and died in there. Doesn’t taste so good either.
In this case it’s because it’s nonpotable, where it was manufactured hasn’t passed any of the quality control certificates needed by a health body. Basically it could have bacteria, virus, or toxic substances in it.
Demineralised water along with distilled, ultrapure and deionised are all “safe” to drink. They will however leech salts and minerals out of your body, you do replenish these from your diet so it isn’t a great concern unless you are heavily dehydrated ie you are running the death valley ultra marathon. That would exacerbate electrolyte loss and could lead to chronic Electrolyte Imbalance
Hell you can even drink heavy water without much issue, you’d need to replace about 20% of the water in your body with heavy water for it to get potentially lethal.
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Been good responses but the ELI5 is more simple.
Water always has extra stuff in it, mostly stuff that your body needs. Sometimes water has too much of that stuff in it and when the water dries or you wipe it up, a small amount of that stuff gets left behind. That can be bad sometimes anything that boils water or has water running through it can start to gunk up with all that stuff that gets left behind, and start to break. So we invented ways to take all that stuff out of the water so we can use extra clean water for those things. It’s not safe to drink because it’s so clean, it has so little stuff in it, that it acts like a sponge when it touches things and absorbs some stuff from the things it touches. When it touches the inside of your mouth, it takes things out of your body that your body needs, and that can hurt you.
2 reasons:
1) at the hardware store, they don’t use machines that are rated for human consumption. There may be traces of stuff that’s not safe for human consumption, or it could be contaminated with viruses and bacteria.
2) even if it were food grade, demineralised water is not safe to drink in large quantities or for a long time. As it lacks minerals, it will pull minerals out of your body to maintain balance. This is on obviously not good for you
Water has minerals in it because it’s a good solvent. Minerals from rocks and soil and the like are stripped from their source into water that passes over them. So, that’s what it’ll do in your body. As it passes through you, since it’s been demineralised, it’ll take your minerals. And you need minerals to live.
An explanation from medicos I’ve asked is; lots of things on your body work by transfer of chemicals and ions. By drinking water that is devoid of those (something biological systems never evolved to interact with) you can kinda “wash out” those chemicals your body is used to, and fuck up your kidneys. That’s a very broad and pretty innacurate explanation, but it gets the intuition across. We have biological systems to filter out stuff that isn’t good for us, but we don’t have systems to help us drink something that doesn’t really exist in nature.
Obvious point others have mentioned about food standards.
Second to my understanding your body wants to keep a an equal of water coming in and water already in.
So the water inside you has some minerals and you nedd those.
The water coming in has no minerals so your body actually gets rid of minerals inside you to balance out.
This can cause mineral deficiency.
I have no sources foe this and I may be entirely wrong bht this is my understanding.
When I was at university we went to a drug manufacturer. They had an industrial reverse osmosis purifier / demineraliser. We’re talking almost 100% pure, non-minearal water. They had a story that a colleague used that purified water in his car cooling loop and it ate the walls of the engine cooling loop … Imagine the damage it could do to you.
Maybe it was explained already, but minerals tend to migrate from a higher concentration medium to a lower one
You can drink it but it will actually “steal” ions from your body and depending on the quantity you drink, it might, at worst kill you.
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