I’m confused if it is a marketing term or if it’s a real way to make safe drinking water? If you distill water you are physically removing contaminants, which makes sense that it is safe to drink. De-ionizing is like removing ions, but what does that mean, is the water now cleaner?
In: Chemistry
People get into a bunch of pseudo-science or alternative medicine/lifestyle nonsense; related to this many people also like to connect “nature” to “pure”.
In nature if you have a river with clean water – the water is going over rocks and naturally some of the minerals in the rock end up in the water. Iron, Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, and more – and that’s not necessarily bad for you, often it’s a good thing.
Even though it’s good, clean, and safe – it’s not pure. Now if you have a device that say turns this water into steam or mist – lets say a clothes iron, steamer, humidifier, CPAP machine, etc – the water comes out, but the minerals stay. Then you get a mineral build up which you might have to clean, or it might eventually clog the machine.
With distilled water – the water is boiled in a still, and the steam is cooled to have nearly pure water without those minerals. This water is great to use in those devices and is technically pure water. It’s also great for washing a car – as it dries without leaving spots.
Iron, Magnesium, Potassium, and Calcium are also metals. When these are in water, they conduct electricity and that’s why water can damage electronics. When you remove these from the water, distilled water won’t end up conducting electricity so it can be used to clean electronics more safely. So distilled water is also called de-ionized water. Theoretically water can be de-ionized/purified by other methods also.
However some people like the idea of “pure” water, so they might drink deionized / distilled water as it doesn’t contain significant amounts of minerals. Mineral water is the opposite, where the water came from an area where it got lots of minerals in it. These minerals can also act as electrolytes.
In Flint, Michigan they were paying for Detroit water and they had a river with pure, clean water. Someone thought – “Why pay for dirty Detroit water, when we have the Flint river with pure, clean water?”. Well the minerals in the Detroit water coated the inside of the lead pipes and this coating protected people from the lead. When they pumped purer cleaner water, it cleaned the pipes removing the coating and it absorbed the lead. Sadly many of these pipes were in people’s houses which made it a difficult situation.
Today people often try to look at things as being good and bad as a way to over-simplify it. Which water is good, which is bad? Well any water that’s safe to drink is better than sugary drinks.
Distilled water is more “pure”, but it’s definitely not more “natural” which results in a lot of pseudo-science nonsense in favor of one or the other. Another example was the alkaline fad trying to say acids are bad, but Apple Cider Vinegar and Lemons are good.
In my culture, we have a proverb that roughly translates to “moderation is key”. Too much water will kill you, and too little will kill you – but if you have a reasonable/moderate amount you don’t have to worry. A lot of salt is unhealthy, too little salt is also unhealthy – a pinch of salt as an electrolyte won’t do anything bad.
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