Purified Drinking Water! How Pure Is It? Why are companies adding chemicals?
De-purified drinking water
To get straight to the point, all of the top selling brands of bottled water I am aware of that boldly claim to be purified water, are far from being pure water and have added ingredients.
It is argued that additional ingredients in bottled water are supposedly to provide a more palatable flavor (personally when I want water that is more palatable than water I drink orange juice....unless I want water, in which case I just want water) and apparently the added ingredients are found to occur naturally in water you would find at say, a spring in a plateau of a Himalayan mountain.
The Dark Side
While the chemicals added to bottled water are said to be safe, they have questionable properties or in fact downright disturbing affects in relation to their pharmaceutical use.
Let's look at the complete ingredients of Dasani purified drinking water by coca cola.
Potassium Chloride
- Naturally occurring mineral
- Essential to the human body
- Used in salt substitutes
- Dangerous to people with certain health conditions
- Can be added to food in unspecified amounts
- Irritant
- Fertilizer
- Injected as an abortion method
- One of a mixture of three chemicals used in lethal injection
Magnesium Sulfate
- Naturally occurring mineral
- Essential to the human body
- Epsom salt
- Can be added to food in unspecified amounts
- Laxative
- Salt subtitute
- Drying agent
Salt
- Well it just doesn't need to be added to drinking water unless you personally wish to add it to replace salts
Tap water (purified)
- Pure water (as you would expect purified water to be....Nope)
- Chlorine
- Iodine
Conclusion
I don't know if is actually safe to consume the recommended daily intake of water from bottled water brands.
There is speculation that the chemicals added serve to dry your mouth in order that you are inclined to drink/buy more water in a futile attempt to quench your thirst.
To purify water so you can call it purified water on the label yet de-purify it with additional chemicals to be sold for consumption is misleading and criminal as far as I'm concerned. Some of the brands depict a mountain setting in the background of the label when in reality the water was sourced from a tap plumbed into the local water supply.
Not only does it appear that there is nasty stuff inside the bottle, the bottle itself is made of pretty nasty stuff.
I use a PUR brand faucet mount and they make a basic filter that filters most everything out and then a filter that filters but then remineralizes the water, the remineralised water is much better tasting and quenches your thirst a lot better. I was hearing about someone developing gout as a result of drinking RO water that was too pure. It will leach the minerals out of you if it contains none.
It's interesting that pure water would absorb the minerals from your body. At the moment it seems bottled water is a necessary evil for me ast times as I am on the move quite often around Vietnam, I will look at what the options are on small itsy bitsy water filters or at least try to find distilled water brands though generally the options for bottled water are Coca Cola, Pepsi, or Nestle and they all taste metallic and pretty horrible. I will have to solve this problem.
I was looking at water filters the other day and I saw a product called the pressurized jerry can filter that was on Amazon, you can scoop up 4 gallons of questionable water and filter it, I might pick one up for boating and camping. Bottled water is terrible because it is full of plastic no matter the brand or where you get it. I have tried several faucet mount brands and been pretty happy with the PUR.
Hey there bro! Your post is so relevant for so many of us. Wish I could give you a higher vote.
Am having to suffer french crappy bottled water for now but always with the knowledge that I need an alternative system.
I used to have a distiller back in London. Then I would re-mineralise it.
That vote is the most I've earned on steemit in months! and in ten years it will be worth a grand :) I appreciate it Sam! Thank you. I'm a total minimalist regarding possessions, literally just a rucksack of stuff , I've seen those little survival straws dotted around the internet and these self filling water bottles though I wouldn't know where to get hold of one in Vietnam.
Wow. Looks amazing! Thanks for putting me onto that :)
Thanks for sharing. Yes, stick to distilled or spring water although some of those companies are self regulated