hyperlexis wrote:Sleep2Die4 wrote:hyperlexis wrote:Distilled water is going to be sanitary (not medically sterile) but once opened, left in a humidifier chamber, it's going to become contaminated and inoculated by bacteria, fungi, etc., on the plastic, and also from air being blown into the machine each night.
Dump the water and clean and dry the tank, ideally daily, and it should be fine.
But, leave the water in, blowing in more and more dust and spores into the tank of old water, and the microbes will simply grow and grow in the old water in the tank, like a petri dish. Then the microbes growing in the tank will then be aerosolized by the blowing air while the machine is on. I believe that's what the study showed.
No, the study did not show that. The authors are only talking about patients who use tap water that contains bacteria.
This observation is consistent with increasing recognition of tap water as a source of bacteria that can cause infections among hospitalized patients. However, far less is known of the consequences of contaminated tap water in homes. Therefore, the potential for respiratory infections among those using heated humidification with nCPAP for OSA may be an unrecognized risk.
The study did not cover the use of distilled water and the authors did not raise any concerns about bacteria growing in distilled water.
I have been using CPAP for over 15 years and have never even rinsed out a humidifier tank. My current tank is a little over 7 years old and has never been rinsed. The water that is in it this morning looks clean. I have not had a cold in over three years and have never had a bacterial infection. And I am an old man that is not in very good shape but still work and travel frequently by air.
But anyone who wants to clean their tank daily should .... well, clean their tank daily.
You are misreading the study.
The study found bacteria can live, grow in, and later be aerosolized in CPAP humidifiers and be inhaled. Period.
It's not about tap water or distilled water, it's about water. Tap water has bacteria and organisms in it. Distilled has far fewer, but is not medically sterile. Water is the issue -- because whether it's tap water or distilled, once the water is exposed to air, dust, dirt and miscroscopic debris gets in and microorganisms and fungi start growing. Blow thousands of cubic feet of air through it, with a fan, and you now just supercharged that water with debris. A man named Pasteur was pretty accurate with this stuff a while ago.
So if you leave a cpap humidifier tank filled with old water, distilled or tap, it's going to grow bacteria and microorganisms and they, in turn, will then be aerosolized and inhaled. Tap water being worse, as it has more to organisms start with.
Regardless, the solution is simply for a patient to not be so unbelievably lazy and just dump out his or her cpap tank, and wash and dry it as instructed.
You're missing the point of distilled water.
Microorganisms need nutrients in order to reproduce. Distilled water has very few nutrients the bugs can feed on.
For instance, bugs need to synthesize protein to grow. Protein requires nitrogen. Most of them can't fix nitrogen from the air, so they have to have a source of usable nitrogen. There is very little usable nitrogen in distilled water. There are also a number of other chemicals bugs require that aren't found in distilled water.
Yes, bacteria can fall into the water from the air. However, these bugs are the same things you're breathing all the time without CPAP. Unless there's a food source, there's no greater amount of bugs in the air coming out of the water tank than there is in the air you normally breathe.
Even if the water is sterile, the bugs you're talking about are in the air any way.
If you use tap water, that does have various chemicals in it that can support the growth of bugs over time, especially if you let it concentrate over a long time period as the water evaporates.
Even distilled water has some nutrients and they will accumulate over time as dust falls into the water. The germ growth will be a LOT less with distilled water.
Keeping the tank clean is a good idea. Dumping the water periodically is a good idea, too. Even distilled water needs to be dumped periodically, and the tank should be cleaned.
