Water Myths

WATER CHEMISTRY AND SOME OF THE MYTHS

A well respected retired lecturer in chemistry from a Canadian university has built up a renowned site that de-bunks a number of water myths used by some firms. The science of water chemistry is well represented here and water myths are decoded in a fun and educational way.  www.chem1.com 

One myth that has lingered for many years, often rearing its head from time to time, is the mineral water myth.  Do we want minerals in water, do we need minerals in water? When we use 99% of water for bathing, washing and toilets do we want minerals then?.  How many minerals do we want in drinking water?  Is any level of minerals any use in water at all?  Do filter systems make water better?

A standard RO system (not the RODI type) installed directly on mains water in Galway at typical values of 400 ppm hardness will provide from 20 mg/l to 40 mg/l of total hardness after filtering during their normal service cycles, providing a higher level of minerals than many bottled water brands including Tesco's best selling bottled waters.

One Irish branded bottled water had only 1.5 mg/l of calcium and another had over 100 mg/l of sodium.  When using a standard RO you will expect 100 times less sodium and a higher calcium level than many branded bottled waters.  If an RO is installed on softened water, the resulting filtered sodium level will be 15 times less than Tesco bottled waters.

Drinking softened water straight from the mains tap, in many other counties where the water is hard at 200 mg/l, means you will still have less sodium than the bottled waters that exceeded 100 mg/l.  (Depending on original background trace levels of sodium already present in the hard scheme water, which are often low.)

If minerals in water or taste was a question, you can choose to fit a mineral cartridge after an RO where a water softener is installed prior to it.  Water is a very poor transport system for giving us the dietary minerals that we need.  Take for example the most important daily mineral vital for life and our bodily survival - sodium.  We require 2,400 milligrammes of sodium per day to stay alive.

Drinking 2 litres of softened water, (only marginally higher than normal tap water in sodium) will not provide even 10% of the sodium figure that we need to keep alive.  Inorganic sodium, inorganic calcium, inorganic iron and in fact all minerals found in water are inorganic, and it is suggested they are only 1/20th as effective as the organic minerals found in natural food groups that we eat.

When colloidal / precipitated / inorganic minerals are found in water, if they have only 1/20th the benefit to the body than those found organically in food, then a factor like stomach acidity which gets lower the older we become (also which helps dissolve inorganic minerals) suggests a good food diet is more and more important as we age.

The RDI - Recommended Daily Intake of minerals depends on age along with a large range of other factors when looking at food intake so the matter of water borne minerals is a much wider and unknown science.

In the past when documentary makers have attempted to approach the mineral question, they have often failed badly in reporting a clear and accurate picture.

1)  RTE once demonstrated water tested on 151 water parameters.  This level of testing was beyond what the EU recommend as being needed in normal professional water testing and it confused the standard EU and EPA full audit testing requirements of around 25 to 50 items - the highest levels of testing currently used in day to day laboratory work.

2)  The RTE level of testing gave the idea that the public have to spend over 200 euros or more to correctly test their water.  Only 75 euros was sufficient at the time of filming for a full and extensive range of INAB tested water parameters for highly polluted private well waters, and 50 euros would have covered the mains water they were testing.

3)  RTE also inferred that a Cork water sample that was not fit for human consumption by EU standards (excessive fluoride) was to be viewed as being okay to drink.

4)  RTE allowed confusion for water low in minerals to be possibly harmful without giving any facts and figures relating to this, or indicating that we are provided massive levels of minerals in comparison in foods.  Their suggestions went against established Irish and European Drinking Water Directives which state that there are no lower mineral limits set.

5) The RTE scientists interviewed were not recognised experts in the field of water chemistry regarding chemical water parameters or did they comment upon the position of the Irish EPA or EU Drinking Water Directives or gave full and official advice, facts or opinions of the experts from the Irish EPA, or EU Community regarding water standards.

There are no legal minimum water mineral levels enforceable in use in any EU household - if there was, we would have to stop buying many bottled "Spring Waters" which often fail to provide 1% of RDI minerals by fluid concentration.

On the other hand many other bottled waters would fail tap water regulations in having massive levels - sodium (60 times safe levels), arsenic (40 times safe levels), iron and sulphate (100 times safe levels) - see    http://www.mineralwaters.org

http://www.eupedia.com/europe/european_mineral_waters.shtml

http://www.pmgeiser.ch/mineral/index.php?func=country

http://www.chiff.com/articles/bottled-water.htm 

http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qbw.asp

http://vitamins-minerals.suite101.com/article.cfm/minerals_in_drinking_water

Out of 15 national Irish brands of bottled water, at least two bottled waters widely fail the EU Drinking Water standards set for tap water, and many brands sold in ireland fail to supply even 1% of our daily mineral requirements as set out in normal dietary RDI guidelines. 

Some legally available bottled waters on sale as compared to mains tap water supplied EU Drinking Water Directives ...   (*US EPA and **WHO guidelines)

Bad Mergentheimer Albertquelle  (Germany)

Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)  42,000 mg/l    (US EPA max guideline 500 mg/l)
Calcium (Ca++)  794 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg++)  783 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)  12,870 mg/l    (EU limit 200 mg/l)
Chloride (Cl-)  16,590 mg/l    (EU limit 250 mg/l)
Sulphate (SO4--)  7,370 mg/l    (EU limit 200 mg/l)
Fluoride (F-)  0.52 mg/l
Nitrate (NO3-)  < 0.1 mg/l
Iron (Fe++)  9.73 mg/l    (EU limit 0.2 mg/l)
Manganese (Mn++)  0.95 mg/l    (EU limit 0.5 mg/l)

Karlsquelle Heilwasser  (Germany)

Calcium (Ca++)  782 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg++)  389 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)  4,795 mg/l    (EU limit 200 mg/l)
Chloride (Cl-)  6,382 mg/l    (EU limit 250 mg/l)
Sulphate (SO4--)  3,860 mg/l    (EU limit 200 mg/l)
Fluoride (F-)  0.27 mg/l
Iron (Fe++)  3.65 mg/l    (EU limit 0.2 mg/l)
Manganese (Mn++)  0.11 mg/l

Kissinger Bitterwasser Heilwasser  (Germany)

Calcium (Ca++)  539 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg++)  4,196 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)  4,690 mg/l    (EU limit 200 mg/l)
Chloride (Cl-)  3,739 mg/l    (EU limit 250 mg/l)
Sulphate (SO4--)  21,634 mg/l    (EU limit 200 mg/l)
Fluoride (F-)  0.09 mg/l
Iron (Fe++)  0.05 mg/l
Manganese (Mn++)  0.48 mg/l

Vincentka  (Czech)

Acidity (PH)  6.1
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)  8,020 mg/l
Calcium (Ca++)  245.29 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg++)  18 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)  2,017 mg/l    (EU limit 200 mg/l)
Sulphate (SO4--)  5.76 mg/l    (EU limit 200 mg/l)
Fluoride (F-)  2.13 mg/l    (EU limit 0.6 - 0.8 mg/l)
Nitrate (NO3-)  0.05 mg/l
Silica (SiO2)  21.12 mg/l
Iron (Fe++)  6.99 mg/l    (EU limit 0.2 mg/l)
Manganese (Mn++)  0.6 mg/l    (EU limit 0.05 mg/l)
Aluminium (Al+++)  3.36 mg/l    (EU limit 0.2 mg/l)

Mitterbad  (Italy)

Calcium (Ca++)  120 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg++)  13 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)  15.3 mg/l
Potassium (K+)  14.3 mg/l
Chloride (Cl-)  1.6 mg/l
Sulphate (SO4--)  418 mg/l    (EU limit 200 mg/l)
Fluoride (F-)  3.4 mg/l    (EU limit 0.6 - 0.8 mg/l)
Iron (Fe++)  ?? mg/l    (EU limit 0.2 mg/l)
Manganese (Mn++)  1.97 mg/l    (EU limit 0.05 mg/l)
Aluminium (Al+++)  2.12 mg/l   (EU limit 0.2 mg/l)
Arsenic (As)  0.4 mg/l   (EU limit 0.01 mg/l)
Copper (Cu++)  0.088 mg/l
Strontium (Sr++)  0.8 mg/l


Alp's  (Austria)

Calcium (Ca++)  37.9 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg++)  15.2 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)  4.6 mg/l
Chloride (Cl-)  < 1 mg/l
Sulphate (SO4--)  10.1 mg/l
Fluoride (F-)  4 mg/l
Nitrate (NO3-)  0.6 mg/l
Manganese (Mn++)  < 10 mg/l
Zinc (Zn++)  25.4 mg/l
Iodine (I-)  24 mg/l

Aveta Celtic Goddess of Healing Waters  (Eire)

Calcium (Ca++)  1.51 mg/l    (very poor calcium content - RDI 1000 mg)
Magnesium (Mg++)  16.6 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)  67.25 mg/l
Potassium (K+)  1.45 mg/l
Chloride (Cl-)  89 mg/l
Sulphate (SO4--)  30.2 mg/l
Fluoride (F-)  0.13 mg/l
Nitrate (NO3-)  < 4.4 mg/l
Iron (Fe++)  ?? mg/l    (EU limit 0.2 mg/l)
Strontium (Sr++)  0.9 mg/l


Fior Uisce  (Eire)

Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)  731 mg/l
Calcium (Ca++)  95.7 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg++)  9.64 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)  107.2 mg/l    (high but not excessive sodium content)
Chloride (Cl-)  56 mg/l
Sulphate (SO4--)  314 mg/l    (EU limit 200 mg/l)
Fluoride (F-)  0.17 mg/l
Silica (SiO2)  16.1 mg/l
Iron (Fe++)  0.01 mg/l
Manganese (Mn++)  0.01 mg/l
Strontium (Sr++)  2.7 mg/l
Ammonium (NH4+)  0.14 mg/l
Hardness  166


Mace Sparkling Irish Spring Water  (Eire)

Acidity (PH)  7.6
Calcium (Ca++)  8 mg/l    (low calcium content - RDI 1000 mg [less than 1% of daily needs])
Magnesium (Mg++)  8 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)  31 mg/l
Potassium (K+)  0.3 mg/l
Bicarbonate (HCO3-)  95.7 mg/l
Chloride (Cl-)  26 mg/l
Sulphate (SO4--)  5 mg/l
Nitrate (NO3-)  0.5 mg/l

Volvic  (France)

Calcium (Ca++)  9.9 mg/l    (low calcium content - RDI 1000 mg [less than 1% of daily needs])
Magnesium (Mg++)  6.1 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)  9.4 mg/l
Potassium (K+)  5.7 mg/l
Bicarbonate (HCO3-)  258 mg/l
Chloride (Cl-)  8.4 mg/l
Sulphate (SO4--)  6.9 mg/l
Nitrate (NO3-)  6.3 mg/l
Silica (SiO2)  30 mg/l
Iron (Fe++) < 0.01 mg/l
Aluminium (Al+++) < 0.01 mg/l