Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)

[ElliotB]

I am quite strict and disciplined when it comes to diet and exercise, but I had no idea that the filtered water I was drinking could be a problem for me. Motivated by a recent thread dealing with organic foods, I have begun growing my own veggies using a hydroponic based system (no soil, just water). Many but not of my plants died within a couple of weeks. After numerous tech support calls to the company I purchased my system from, they recommended I switch to distilled water and sure enough my hydroponic garden is now flourishing.

If there is something in my water supply that is killing my plants that is getting through my filtered water supply (reverse osmosis which is considered a very good system), how good can my filtered water be for me? Needless to day, I have just purchased a home water distiller and will now only drink distilled water which is as pure as you can get.

Here is a link to some basic info on VOCs:

http://www.drinktap.org/home/water-info ... ounds.aspx


Here is a link to some basic info on distilled water:

http://www.drinking-water-for-health.co ... water.html

But as with just about every food, there are those that don't agree that distilled water is good for you. In fact, in a recent search, one of the top links predicts early death from drinking distilled water:

http://www.mercola.com/article/water/di ... _water.htm


So who is right? Who knows? But at this time I will take my chances with clean, pure distilled water over tap/filtered water.


There is a lot of information available on the web on VOCs and the importance of distilled water.

[DrGeoff]

Interesting!
I live in a "hard" water area (lots of dissolved calcium, etc) with added chlorine and fluoride. The chlorine tase is not as bad as (say) Las Vegas, but enough to ruin a good cup of coffee.
We only drink, and cook with, filtered water (carbon filter, not reverse osmosis) which gets rid of the taste. I see from ElliotB's second link that this gets rid of the VOCs as well, but it was rather scary to see just what it does not get rid of.
It also makes me wonder about the bottled Spring Water that I use for Biotin.

I would not worry about Mercola being against distilled water - to me this is just because he cannot see a way to make money out of it. The point about trace elements is probably valid, but supplements should take care of this. When you stop and think about it, the trace elements will vary from place to place, so that someone in (say) Bakersfield CA is probably getting a totally different set of trace elements to someone in Ohio.
Geoff

[CureOrBust]

Distilled water is an active absorber and when it comes into contact with air, it absorbs carbon dioxide, making it acidic. The more distilled water a person drinks, the higher the body acidity becomes.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Distilled water, being essentially mineral-free, is very aggressive, in that it tends to dissolve substances with which it is in contact. Notably, carbon dioxide from the air is rapidly absorbed, making the water acidic and even more aggressive. Many metals are dissolved by distilled water."

So, drop some salts (organic of course, and not just sodium) or such and problem solved. The first thing that popped onto my head is that rain is basically distilled water. All our water is basically distilled at some point. As for the acidity, is it more acidic than lemon juice? or carbonated soda drinks? Add something that counteract this action to your diet.

[lyndacarol]

ElliotB's water-hydroponics garden problem is certainly a conundrum!

Since my focus at present is on glyphosate, my first thought was that glyphosate is present in the filtered water and is tying up the minerals that the plants need to survive. But the same minerals should be missing in distilled water… So how can the plants survive (and even flourish) with distilled water?

A slide frequently in talks by Dr. Don Huber comes to mind: it points out studies in which plants in sterile soil and exposed to glyphosate are stunted compared to control-study plants that have no glyphosate (Plants in field soil and exposed to glyphosate actually die because there are no beneficial bacteria left to fight pathogens.). But this cannot be analogous to ElliotB's situation… there is no soil at all; nor should there be any bacteria – good or bad.

Ideally, one would like to know if there is glyphosate in the water; but unfortunately, to my knowledge there is no lab in the US able to test for glyphosate. (And if glyphosate were to be found in the water, I know of no way to remove it. Even reverse osmosis only removes glyphosate to a very low level; I am not sure RO removes it entirely.)

I know there is now glyphosate in rainwater; if it can make it through that natural distillation process, it seems to me it could be in any distilled water.

As DrGeoff mentioned chlorine, I know that it is not good for plants either (It is recommended that tap water to be used for watering houseplants be allowed to sit and let the chlorine gas dissipate before using.). But chlorine shouldn't be at play here, should it?

In one video about Roundup/GMO's that I've seen, chlorine levels actually increased in GMO plants; but ElliotB's seeds are organic, I'm sure, and this can't be a concern.

Perhaps the next best plan is with distilled water, but adding the mineral nutrients that both we and the plants need.

The ideal water for the human body should be slightly alkaline and this requires the presence of minerals like
calcium
magnesium

So many questions and so few answers about water (and glyphosate)… my head is 'swimming.'

[ElliotB]

"So how can the plants survive (and even flourish) with distilled water?"

Nutrients are added to the water, otherwise the plants would not grow at all. But ultimately, if there is some kind of 'poison' in the water, well, the results for the plants (and other living beings) will be less than optimal.

[1eye]

I used to be around hyper-distilled water used in silicon wafer manufacturing. They use its physical property of resistance to electricity to determine its purity. The more pure it is (the fewer ions of anything dissolved in it), the higher its resistance to electricity. Pure enough water has very very high resistance. It will not conduct electricity.

If it is exposed to CO2 and gets acidic, that will happen after the bottle is opened. The time spent with water exposed to CO2, will determine how much gets dissolved.

The problem I have with tap water is, here, it has a lot of chlorine in it. I used to have a well and reverse osmosis filter. Then I got MS. Then, years later, I moved here where there is chlorinated tap water. I think the gram or so of drugs I take every day poses a much higher threat than anything I get in tap water.

I once left a cast iron pan full of reverse-osmosis filtered water on top of my wood stove to see what was left after it dissolved. The bottom of the pan was coated with whatever was in the water. I think it had some red and yellow stuff in it, and that was no surprise because the untreated well water smelled like sulfur.

We can't kill plants with our tap water. They like it. Weeds grow like weeds. So do non-weeds. Have to keep mowing the lawn, etc.

Distilled water is good, but without something food-like dissolved in it (try soil), the plants will still starve. I used to feed my seedlings distilled water from a sterile syringe, and they would never have lived to enjoy that, if they weren't also in good soil.

[David1951]

depending on where you live you are probably breathing more VOCs than you could get from water.

For example, deciduous trees emit great amounts of the compound isoprene during a hot day; coniferous trees emit the volatile organic compound pinene day and night.

David