Caution in drinking RO or RO/DI water

[Amphiprion]

I can see where you would not want to drink water that goes through the DI filter, but not drinking reverse osmosis water?? Huh? Isn't most bottled "drinking water" filtered through reverse osmosis. I thought some municipal water systems use reverse osmosis for treatment, but I could be wrong.

Personally I'd rather not drink the extra arsenic or cryptosporidium or nitrates or god knows what that comes from the municipal system. I guess I am paranoid like that

It is RO water, but it has a much higher TDS than aquarium or lab grade water--2 very different things. I am referring to highly purified RO and DI water, which does present a problem. Also, note on Dasani and Aquafina that they actually add minerals back to the water. Some municipal systems use them with very hard water or in areas where desalination is the norm. As far as arsenic, lead, cryptosporidium, Giardia lamblia, etc., they are in negligible quantities in our drinking water. If anything, our water is actually slightly over chlorinated. Surprisingly, mobile area water ranks in the 90th percentile as far as water standards go, so these things are even less of a problem.

[Brandon]

We're in Baldwin county... I believe the water quality is normally pretty good here.

It was somewhere in Baldwin county about 6 months ago (foley maybe?) where they actually had a sewage line tapped directly into a water line, people in the neighborhood had complained about poor water quality for about 6 months I believe before anything was found. I remember reading the residents said the water smelled bad and was an off-color. Blech!!

Not the norm of course, but egads if that doesn't feed my paranoia

RO water is not totally void of minerals though... not sure how much all this matters, I'm a computer programmer not a water scientist, so no clue.

[snoopdog]

I'm a computer programmer not a water scientist

Ok fix this.

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[Amphiprion]

We're in Baldwin county... I believe the water quality is normally pretty good here.

It was somewhere in Baldwin county about 6 months ago (foley maybe?) where they actually had a sewage line tapped directly into a water line, people in the neighborhood had complained about poor water quality for about 6 months I believe before anything was found. I remember reading the residents said the water smelled bad and was an off-color. Blech!!

Not the norm of course, but egads if that doesn't feed my paranoia

RO water is not totally void of minerals though... not sure how much all this matters, I'm a computer programmer not a water scientist, so no clue.

Never seen any Baldwin county specs, so I have no idea about that. A sewage leak definitely counts--tapped into the line!!?? I guess that is enough to feed anyone's paranoia. As far as being completely void, you are right--it isn't 100%, but for very pure RO water (or RO/DI water), it effectively is. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't really consider anything 5 or less TDS as a discernable amount of minerals.

Now, as if this wasn't really confusing enough, some areas use local snowmelt, topping out at about, oh, 2-5 TDS, but it is treated (and tastes nasty), though. Still not entirely sure how good it is for you.

On the other hand, I know water fairly well, but not computer programming--so it is sort of a trade off. Stuff looks like mandarin chinese to me .

[snoopdog]

I notice that my RO/DI water had a funky taste to it. Not sure if this is the lack of minerals or something in the water that makes it taste nasty. I do not orginally remember any taste to the water, but then again after drinking water constantly for all these months I can taste the difference in city/Ro/Dasani/Deer Park/Aquafina

[Amphiprion]

Waters with a higher mineral content taste much better. I am glad I am not the only one who notices all these taste differences. One of my favorite tasting waters, Evian (can't afford it, though), is actually fairly hard. Look at any good waters that have an analysis--you will always notice that they are on the harder side, because soft water tastes horrible. I should know, the water right out of tap has a TDS of about 30, 0 dKH, 2 dGH and it has the worst taste.