^^your above mentioned "impurities" as shown in the above list are also common ingredients of spring waters as well. I do not think your list makes any points.

Phosphates? calcium? copper? sodium? chlorine? do you REALLY consider these things as impurities?

Okey dokey

You left these off my list:

Lead,
Aluminum,
Nitrates,
Fluoride,
Radium,
Arsenic.

I was being thorough. And ingesting too much of what you did list is indeed bad for you.

Getting it clean and keeping it free of pathogens without coagulants and chlorine... I'm no expert, but I think the cost doing this on the required scale would be incredibly high. Given the tiny percentage of water actually used for drinking, potentially the cheapest way to achieve this would be installing and maintaining RO units / filters in every client's premises. Which isn't a lot different than the status quo, really.

Please forgive me and my bluntness.

You are correct in that the poison is in the dosage. Pretty much all the elements you listed (and even more!) are found in varying amounts in water. This is why simply listing them does not make a point. The point would be strong if you had given us relative concentrations of each of these compounds in the water plus what is generally accepted as a "safe range" for consumption.

I believe it is worth mentioning that the conducted study was a meta-analysis previously published works on fluoride, and reports not that fluoride lowers IQ but that the collective research done thus far is consistent with fluoride having a negative effect on IQ

As it obviously happens with such analyses, they do not quantify the negative effect (i.e. how much lower IQ?) and whether there is an obvious danger to it.

Is there any way to test the level of Fluoride?

Beside taking samples to the lab.


It is pretty sick, in Romania tap water tastes like...crap.I think they figured that people just buy drinkable water from the store believing those are healthier.
I have the luck of owning a fountain, and not permanently living in a city.

The list was in the context of the fellow who went to his local water company and was impressed with all the effort to clean water, wherein I listed all the crap that's still in the water even after all that work. (and I actually left out a lot more substances for conciseness sake)

To give relative concentrations of each substance, I would have to go city by city, town by town, state by state, since each water company filters to different degrees. I am not going to be that anal.

You know there's also an acceptable amount of rat turds the FDA allows in various foods? I don't really respect what "acceptable" levels of various poisons are supposed to be.

You are free to drink unfiltered tap water, and, really, you probably won't have any negative effects (at least not that you know of) , but when you add the toxins in the water, plus what's in the air, plus what's in the food, it all adds up. Taking baby steps like buying distilled water helps remove at least one source of body pollution.

food for thought.. your cells also require Na+, Ca2+, even Cl- ions.
deionized water obviously won't supply that.
drinking nothing but deionized water isn't only counterproductive, it's toxic (your cells are also subject to osmosis).

^this.

We used to have a $1500 water filter and ionizer but sold it because we have access to a spring and we liked that water even more.

Water (even the hardest water) is not a significant nutritional source of minerals. You get your minerals from the food you eat.

Some cultures (I'm thinking of SE Asia, for example) collect and use rain water for their drinking--basically distilled water.

Also, of course, ANY common drinking water is heavily unbalanced osmotically for cells--even the hardest water you could find would kill almost any animal cells in short order. (In fact I once did a video microscopy study on just this phenomenon (using tap water), for an undergrad microscopy class.)

BTW, The fluoride ion is far from rare in nature. There are in fact some natural water sources with very HIGH concentrations of fluoride ion--sometimes with clear health dangers (fluoride IS toxic above certain levels).

On the wikipedia article on fluoridation, it mentions that a lot of people live on naturally fluoridated water. The same article mentions that the historical interest in fluoridation was initiated by noticing a population in Colorado who had low cavity levels (and brown stained teeth)--and it was discovered their water had high natural fluoride concentrations.

If you drink "natural" untested water from a well or spring, you have NO IDEA what's in it (even if it tastes good). It could contain higher levels of fluoride than fluoridated water--as well as arsenic, cadmium, or a host of other toxic metals.

"If you drink "natural" untested water from a well or spring, you have NO IDEA what's in it"

The springs I drink from have been independently tested. Heavy metal levels are fine and ph is very slightly alkaline. The city also just tapped the same aquafer about 5 minutes up the trail and put in a public well stating it is tested safe to drink. There is no way the springs I drink from are contaminated or have unsafe heavy metal levels.. and many of the springs on findasprig.com have been at least independantly tested. People do need to be aware that some spring water does have lots of heavy metals so testing is a good idea. There are even quite famous "lithium springs" with high levels of natural lithium.

Calcium fluoride and sodium fluoride are not the same thing.

Just concider the solubility difference..sodium fluoride has a solubility of 18,000 ppm, while calcium fluoride only has a solubility of 8 ppm. Claiming people live on wild waters with calcium fluoride does not really tell us much about sodium fluoride industrial waste that is added to public drinking water.

Luckily where I am in BC fluoride has never been added to the water supply.

It's only ionic fluoride that's relevant to the discussion--its molecular source doesn't matter.

Nothing I said is controversial, or needs to elicit any argument. And...I'm not sure why you responded to my remark about UNTESTED water with a discussion of a tested source...

The very simple fact is that ROCKS are MINERALS. And any natural water source can theoretically contain ANY water soluble ion it comes in contact with. ALL "minerals" are natural, by definition--and some minerals are dangerously toxic (and others are absolutely necessary for life).

why is every other word in caps all time in your posts? Just wondering..

Let's see, 89 words (so WORD tells me--oh no, I've capitalized another word!), and I count 5 as being capitalized. So, your remark about every other word must be about someone else's post (sorry if I mistakenly assumed it was about my post).

Why are you so antagonistic toward me--even when I supply clear, dispassionate, scientific relevant and valid information on a completely fact-based subject, like minerals dissolved in water. Just wondering.

wow I just had a load of fun reading that little bicker! Thanks SWIMfriend and Jaime!

I also sometimes capitalize my words instead of clicking on the italics button... sorry I don't have anything to add at the moment to the discussion, have a pounding headache.

SWIMfriend stated that when you drink water from a source that is UNTESTED that you have no idea what you are drinking.

That you did take care for checking that the water source that you drink from is ok but that does not ivalidate his point. Also, tests done by a city can as well be borderline on drinkable or not, getting the actual test results that state the values that you think are important is the only way you will know that the water quality you drink from is indeed within YOUR safety limits as well.


Kind regards,

The Traveler


p.s. I also often use CAPITALS to emphasize what I think is important in a sentence.

all I was pointing out is that relatively pure water isn't necessarily a safe alternative. your counterargument doesn't even refute anything I stated.

^^You said drinking de-ionized water is counter-productive and toxic. You gave as reasons nutritional needs and osmotic issues. Those two items don't demonstrate that it is either counter-productive or toxic: water is not a meaningful source of mineral nutritional needs, and osmotic issues are unimportant for water taken by the gut (but are demonstrable in cell culture).

The points I make suggest that it would not be counter-productive or toxic. De-ionized water is fine to drink, and many people do drink it (some, culturally, for generations over many centuries--as rain water).