Question on storing distilled water

adipasqu wrote:He mentioned that his emergency water supply was going to be made up of distilled water that he could also use in his humidifier. If his emergency water supply was going to be all the water available to him for some period of time and didn't have anything else, then this would be a real possibility. While distilled water might be safe to drink in small quantities on occasion, it should not be used as a regular, exclusive drinking water source...simple biology. Get regular drinking water jugs for your emergency water source and keep distilled water for your humidifier.

That's the first thing I thought of when I read the OP. Bad idea to have distilled water for an emergency drinking water supply.

Since storage is an issue, reduce your emergency drinking water supply by the one-gallon to make room for one-gallon of distilled water. If you run out of distilled water, use tap water in the humidifier. If you get residue in your humidifier tank, it is easy to clean.

Krelvin wrote: Actually, common sense needs to apply here. Normal "emergency" water supplies are supposed to last for up to 72 hours in an emergency. Where you are that is typically 1gal of water per person per day.

Here in the desert I would double that and ANY clean uncontaminated water works just fine for that purpose. The fact that you can purify water onsite with a distilled process makes it common in many parts of the world as well and why I have a distiller in my kit for that very purpose along with a few other water purification methods.

The lack of minerals etc... are not going to mean much for the short period of time you will be using it exclusively to get through the emergency. You make it sound like you will die drinking it. The fact is, during an emergency you die because you don't have water not because it doesn't have minerals in it.

As for going out of your way to have stored water, you might have more than you think. For example, I also have a built in emergency water supply at the house as I have Sparklets water service and due to mix ups in delivery almost always have 5-7 5 gallon bottles of water above what I use in a whole month on site. Just checked, we have 11 bottles here now with one in the cooler.

You are right, common sense needs to apply here. Don't buy distilled water as an emergency water source. Buy drinking water. I am not saying you will die from drinking it, especially short term, but what I am saying there are better alternatives to stockpiling distilled water as your emergency water source. The fact you can distill water in an emergency and safely drink it as is for a limited period of time doesn't justify the purchase of distilled water for your emergency water source. You would distill sea water and drink the distillate in an emergency because the distillate is substantially less harmful for you than sea water. Some survival kits also include remineralization tablets/packets for distilled water for longer term use of distilled water.

adipasqu wrote:

remstarcpap wrote:Hi all,
Maybe I should just repurpose the distilled water in the large container as emergency drinking water?
!

Distilled water is not suitable for drinking water. The lack of minerals in it will pull minerals from your body and, if enough is consumed, will eventually kill you if it is all you drink. Boiling water to kill bacteria in it is different from distilling water for purification. Coming from a chemist, don't drink distilled water!

Coming from a Biologist, this isn't a question for a chemist! 1. The quantity of minerals in water is infinitesimal compared to what we get from our diet. Absolutely no harm will come from eliminating that source. 2. As far as leaching minerals from the body, this is patently false and sounds like something a chemist would postulate given no understanding of living systems. If you ground up a human body and put it in a vat of distilled water, sure it would leach out minerals in an attempt to reach equilibrium. But a living body is not like that. That's why we have kidneys after all!

Guest wrote: Coming from a Biologist, this isn't a question for a chemist! 1. The quantity of minerals in water is infinitesimal compared to what we get from our diet. Absolutely no harm will come from eliminating that source. 2. As far as leaching minerals from the body, this is patently false and sounds like something a chemist would postulate given no understanding of living systems. If you ground up a human body and put it in a vat of distilled water, sure it would leach out minerals in an attempt to reach equilibrium. But a living body is not like that. That's why we have kidneys after all!

I assume you, as a biologist, have heard of cytolysis? Hypotonic shock? What if kidney function is compromised? Qualitatively, what happens to the LD50 of water when you remove all minerals from it, making it more hypotonic than ordinary tap or drinking water? Sure, the mineral content in drinking water does not compare with what we get in our diet, but it isn't infinitesimal on an absolute scale (milligrams of Na+, Ca2+, Mg2+ per mL: see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1495189/). What if you have no food in an emergency? Ultimately, the question is why would you store distilled water for consumption when it is just as easy to store drinking water?

ButtermilkBuoy wrote:

adipasqu wrote:He mentioned that his emergency water supply was going to be made up of distilled water that he could also use in his humidifier. If his emergency water supply was going to be all the water available to him for some period of time and didn't have anything else, then this would be a real possibility. While distilled water might be safe to drink in small quantities on occasion, it should not be used as a regular, exclusive drinking water source...simple biology. Get regular drinking water jugs for your emergency water source and keep distilled water for your humidifier.

That's the first thing I thought of when I read the OP. Bad idea to have distilled water for an emergency drinking water supply.

Since storage is an issue, reduce your emergency drinking water supply by the one-gallon to make room for one-gallon of distilled water. If you run out of distilled water, use tap water in the humidifier. If you get residue in your humidifier tank, it is easy to clean.

This would be my recommendation, too. Store larger quantities of drinking water and a minimal amount of distilled.
It would be cheaper to recycle the drinking water and keep it "fresh" than to store distilled. If you're on a city water system, it's already "treated".


Den

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Yes, those cheapo jugs do leak.
I had a 3 gallon jug of peanut oil in the unfinished attic over the garage.
You guesses it! Oil slick on the plywood floor! Ugh!

Yes, I've had more than one of those gallon containers spring a leak. I think expansion and contraction causes them to "work" and spring a leak if there's an imperfection in the jug like a dent - just a theory. Anyway, I always put some kind of catch basin (like a plastic dishpan) under all liquids that will be stored out of sight for any length of time, like those kept under the sink or in the pantry. The under sink pans do double duty as they will catch plumbing leaks as well.

Wulfman... wrote:This would be my recommendation, too. Store larger quantities of drinking water and a minimal amount of distilled.
It would be cheaper to recycle the drinking water and keep it "fresh" than to store distilled. If you're on a city water system, it's already "treated".

Distilled water tastes flat as hell.

Of course, if the big quake hits, and your house is lying down around your ankles, you might not be too concerned with water taste.

Midnight Strangler wrote:

Wulfman... wrote:This would be my recommendation, too. Store larger quantities of drinking water and a minimal amount of distilled.
It would be cheaper to recycle the drinking water and keep it "fresh" than to store distilled. If you're on a city water system, it's already "treated".

Distilled water tastes flat as hell.

Of course, if the big quake hits, and your house is lying down around your ankles, you might not be too concerned with water taste.

That's what I've read......just never had the urge to try tasting it though.

Yeah, I kind of had that thought, too. A person may not even be able to find or get to their stockpiles of "stuff" either.


Den

.

I've consumed 12-14 ounces of distilled water daily for the past 5 years, I use it to make my coffee in a Keurig machine. (to eliminate lime scale problems) No signs of impending death due to leached minerals..... as of yet. Our spring water is LOADED with limestone, so I drink Deer Park bottled water in hopes of minimizing the formation of kidney stones of which I have formed/passed many in the last 20 years. Anecdotally, I don't seem to have any further stone activity since I started PAP therapy in April 2015. Might just be a coincidence, can't say for sure. One thing is for sure, I don't miss the stones.

And another thing...check those jug use-by dates. Here in Florida I think they're all a year out from bottling, though it seems like a while back they were two years out. Anyway, if the use-by date is July 2016 and this is November, it's probably already been sitting around somewhere for 4 months or so. Not that age has much impact on distilled water, but it probably does on the plastic container.

remstarcpap wrote: I bought a bunch of gallons distilled water

Due to explosion danger (Water is 2/3 hydrogen.), handle it very carefully.

adipasqu wrote:I assume you, as a biologist, have heard of cytolysis? Hypotonic shock? What if kidney function is compromised? Qualitatively, what happens to the LD50 of water when you remove all minerals from it, making it more hypotonic than ordinary tap or drinking water? Sure, the mineral content in drinking water does not compare with what we get in our diet, but it isn't infinitesimal on an absolute scale (milligrams of Na+, Ca2+, Mg2+ per mL: see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1495189/). What if you have no food in an emergency?

There are plenty of people who have drunk distilled water as their main water supply for long periods of time. Plenty of people use home distillers. There are locations where the municipal tap water has virtually no minerals. They are even listed in the study you mentioned. Rainwater is distilled water, and plenty of people use cisterns and drink essentially pure rainwater.

If there was a big problem, these people would have obvious problems. They don't.

In that study you mentioned, the correlation between drinking distlled or low mineral water content is speculative and very small in any case.

Distilled water is "dangerous" in the same sense that eating meat is dangerous. Maybe statistically significant, but not something to panic over.

Actually, I suspect distilled water is less dangerous than tap water. The "natural" water in our streams and groundwater has dozens of potentially harmful natural chemicals in it, including arsenic and heavy metals. There are also whatever man made pollutants are there in trace amounts, or even in significant amounts when someone spills something or makes a mistake at the water treatment plant. Germs can make it through the water treatment process, or grow in the water lines. Given that you're going to be drinking tap water for your whole life, these risks add up over you lifetime, and probably add up to more risk than distilled water.

There might be some minor, long term, risk of drinking distilled water, but quit fear mongering and making it sound like distilled water is some sort of deadly poison.

As for LD50, are you ****ing kidding me? Unless you planning to guzzle a gallon or two in one sitting, LD50 is irrelevant, and in that case, distilled vs. tap water wouldn't make any difference.

adipasqu wrote:Ultimately, the question is why would you store distilled water for consumption when it is just as easy to store drinking water?

Distilled water keeps better than tap water long term because it doesn't have the nitrates and other chemicals germs need to reproduce. I'm not sure how much longer it keeps than commercial bottled water, which might be pasteurized to some extent and sealed.

Gasper62 wrote:I've consumed 12-14 ounces of distilled water daily for the past 5 years, I use it to make my coffee in a Keurig machine.

Coffee made with distilled water is flat and lifeless. Distilled water typically does not have dissolved air in it. It's the dissolved air in water that brings out the finer flavors in coffee when it hits the taste buds.

Of course if you are drinking Folger's pods, why waste good water?

Opinions vary, yours is duly noted. WTF ? Folgers ? Mostly Peruvian or Guatemalan. LOL