More of us are starting to skip the soda and drink a lot more water instead. A Beverage Marketing study found water consumption in the U. Drinking more water is a smart and healthy decision! But, you still have a lot of choices when it comes to what kind of water you drink. Natural spring water? Tap water? Reverse osmosis drinking water systems provide you with clean, refreshing water right in your home.
Contaminated water and its negative effects on health have been making a lot of headlines lately. The water crisis in Flint, Michigan involving lead prompted increased scrutiny of public water around the country. However, with a reverse osmosis system, you can drastically reduce those unwanted contaminants. The special membrane filters out the vast majority of microscopic organisms and heavy metals.
Learn more about how reverse osmosis systems work. Water softeners are specifically designed to remove hard minerals from the water. Water softeners solve a lot of hard water problems , but they are not meant to for purification. However, not everyone enjoys the taste of softened water.
When it is consumed, it also leaches minerals from the body. This means that the minerals being consumed in food and vitamins are being urinated away. Hence, whatever the claims could be from the RO suppliers, drinking water treated using RO technology is definitely hazardous to health. If the osmolality of the fluid to be filtered by the kidney is lower than normal lower solute concentration, such as low TDS water nervous and hormonal feedback mechanisms cause the kidney to excrete more water than normal and thus maintain the ion concentration of fluid to normal values.
The opposite is true if the ion concentration of the fluid to be filtered is higher than normal. Minerals in drinking water are required A claim is made that minerals in water are absorbed into the bloodstream more quickly that from food. As far back as , one of the authors wrote an article addressing this issue. Another claim is that humans need the beneficial minerals e. No two drinking-water sources are the same with regard to mineral concentration or any other parameter, for that matter , and even supplies with very high hardness levels would only provide about 6.
The rest would have to come from food. Myth: RO water will attack the body Yet another claim is that RO purified water is so pure that it will attack the mucous membranes in the body and cause harm.
This water is all described as low TDS water. There are numerous scientific studies as far back as 3 addressing the health effects of drinking low TDS water. There is also significant anecdotal evidence of humans consuming low TDS water for extended periods of time without any known health effects. An example of this is the city of Vancouver, BC, Canada. There are alternative technologies such as natural zeolites, CDI, etc.
This is a broader subject for another article addressing their limitations. Fact : It is critically important to remember that it is the water, not the soluble or suspended minerals and other constituents that serve as a solvent and medium for the transport of nutrients and wastes to and from cells throughout the body. In point-of-fact, it must be noted that the US Navy has used distilled water with less than 3-ppm TDS aboard navy vessels for more than 50 years. Submarine crews typically drink nothing but low-TDS purified water for months at a time, all with no reported ill effects.
They do not consider low-TDS water to be a problem and have no minimum standards. No ill-health effects were observed during a one-year test. Many hundreds of thousands of RO drinking-water appliances have been sold residentially over the past 40 years without any reported ill health effects from consumption of this type of water.
Myth: RO wastes water A primary criticism of RO technology has been that it wastes too much water and that membranes must be replaced frequently. It is important to realize that any technology designed to remove a contaminant from a water stream has to separate and collect the contaminant.
Ion exchange resins and activated carbon, respectively, exchange and adsorb the contaminants, but they still have to eventually be removed, by generating a waste stream or by discarding the resin. In the case of RO, the wastewater reject or concentrate stream is continuous. In this technology, the term recovery refers to the percentage of feedwater flow that passes through the membrane and becomes permeate purified water.
Obviously, minus recovery is the percentage of the feedwater stream that is wastewater. This wastewater is not highly concentrated.
For example, for a typical POU RO unit operating at percent recovery , the concentration of salts in the wastewater is only percent higher than in the feedwater. In many cases, this wastewater can easily be collected and used for other purposes such as watering plants, washing dishes, etc.
A trend in the industry is to manufacture RO units that run at higher recovery, approaching 50 percent, which will significantly reduce the quantity of the wastewater stream. In addition, experience has shown that most membranes last at least 10 years in operation. Myth: Bottled water is better than RO water Many consumers rely on bottled water for their only source of drinking water. However, the chemical contamination present in water is not completely eliminated by boiling.
Furthermore, boiling may not always be possible anytime in any situation due to lack of heat source or shortage of fuel or electricity. Pour four drops of liquid bleach in one liter of water; 8 drops in per half gallon; and 16 drops in per gallon of water.
Let it rest for at least half an hour to make the water drinkable. Excessive chlorine can be dangerous to health and must maintain some caution. Pour 5 drops of iodine in per liter of clean water. Add some extra few drops if the water is cloudy. Let it rest for at least half an hour before it is suitable to drink. Iodine is more effective if the water temperature is more than 21 degrees Celsius.
People go for demineralised RO water because of the failure of Govt. Therefore the Government should take earnest steps to see that local bodies supply potable safe water to the people. Doctors should play an active role in educating the public about the dangers of RO water consumption and counsel the people to go for alternatives. I am a retired professor of Community Medicine.
I write on social issues of concern. I have published books on Public health and nutrition. I have also published a book of articles on social issues and two poem books. Akshay G Paraskar. Gyanendra Shravan. Gaargi Tomar. Abinaya Suresh. Maharshi Ghosh. Sai Prabhas Mallidi. Side effects, even after just a few months What is alarming is the fact that consuming RO water for even just a few months can create serious side effects.
Negative effect on homeostasis mechanisms Consumption of RO water leads to the dilution of the electrolytes dissolved in the body water.
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