I heard, on the radio, recently that PURE water is poison. Would someone or ones please enlighten me? :eek:
Define “poison”. If you try hard enough, you can die from drinking too much water because it screws up your electrolyte levels; do a search for “water intoxication”.
At the feet of the Master:
Can water be too pure? Is too much water bad for you?
Humans aren’t dependent on water for any essential constituent of their diets other than H2O itself. … Some people claim extra-pure water will cause vital minerals to be leached out of the body. Nonsense: under normal circumstances, you get all the minerals you need from food.
From the year 2000: Is distilled water safe to drink?
Short answer: YES
An infamous case of ‘ecstacy’ related death in Sydney about 10 years ago involved the death of a young girl Anna Wood from hyponatremia - water poisoning. She drank too much water without replenishing electrolytes which lead to ‘cerebral edema’ - swelling forced the brain stem into the spinal cord.
So yeah. Apart from drowning water can kill. As Paracelcus said the dose makes the poison.
I suppose I should say that the purpose of the Paracelcus quote was to point out you need to drink lots of water in this case, since water is not very toxic, for it to have a toxic effect. Taking an antidiuretic helps along with the poisoning.
Here is another case of water overdose – "Just 21 years old, Matt Carrington died, authorities said, after fraternity members kept him up all night, ordering him to do pushups, splashing him with cold water and forcing him to drink gallons of water. It was the water that killed him, Smith was told. Can you believe that? "
As others have said - the purity of the water matters not. Unless it has enough minerals to stave off hyponatremia, or has other more toxic ingredients that may present toxic effects before the water dose.
In a nutshell, PURE WATER IS **NOT ** POISON.
If you are unaware of the hidden perils of dihydrogen monoxide, or H2O, you need to visit this site, lest a ghastly fate befall you unawares:
Actually deionized water can give you the shits…apparently on submarines the ID corpsman will tap off a glass or two for guys with constipation troubles as a quick-n-dirty treatment … to see if they can get things moving without recourse to medication or trying to administer an enema in rather small quarters :eek:
I drink distilled water at home. Many days this is my only beverage. This has been the case for over two years. I have not suffered any ill effects.
Is there a particular reason for your consumption of distilled water? Just curious.
It tastes better than any other kind, in my opinion. Also, the bottled drinking water that is not distilled sometimes reflects some of the seasonal ickiness that I loathe, such as the algae flavor in the spring. We live in an older house in an older suburb. By the time water comes out of the tap here it is always too flavorful for me. I can taste the algea and the chlorine, and the gunk lurking in the system. We decided to get water delivered because it tasted so bad that I was tempted to drink soda instead of water, and I would rather not drink that many calories. After I became pregnant there was no going back. The smell of our tap water would make me vomit.
Our water is not that much worse than many other places. Generally the water up in this area was better before the water pipe tunnel in the lake collapsed. Also the lake has been getting clearer in recent years leading to more algea in the water near the intake points.
So will warm tap water, most of the time. (Don’t know why tea and coffee don’t.) If that doesn’t do the trick, adding 1/2 a teaspoon of salt to a glass of warm tap water will have you moving towards the john in about an hour.
How much water would one have to drink to kill oneself?
A whole lot. Hyponatremia is normally only a realistic problem for marathon and ultramarathon runners.
Some dumbass frat kids (not the pit… can’t say what I really think of them) in my town made a pledge funnel gallons and gallons. He’s dead now.
Is that the kid from Concord cited above? What happened to the ‘torturers’?
No, Plattsburgh NY. The guy who was charged with the worst of the crimes ended up getting a year and had to pay five grand to PBS to make an anti-hazing video that nobody watched except the school admin and people who knew the kid. The others had to do community service by acting in the videos. I don’t know if there were any other punishments.
The letters to the editor every couple week go across the topic of how much the college students cause harm to the town. First off, without the college this place would be a ghost town. Second, Its the frats. Our little house parties don’t kill people, frats and their hazing does. It isn’t regular college kids, for the most part, that go out and take down road signs and break people’s lawn nomes, its the frat guys. It isn’t us who have the reputation to have girls getting roofied in our place, its (most of) the frats. Hell, one of them had matresses in their basement with a video camera. One of my friends came dangerously close to being messed up in that before her friends found her. Thankfully this frat doesn’t exist anymore, but not because of that, no, because they were violating the rules regarding underground pledges who didn’t have the grades or were freshman.
I hate the frat community. Sorry if any of you alumni from any frats are offended, but if you’ve got a chapter in Plattsburgh NY I’d get on the phone and find out if your “brothers” are one of the couple good ones that get a bad name from the majority of the other Eta Botle Roofie frats around here.
Went off on a rant, but yes, the kid died from people forcing him to drink massive quantities of water.
Damnit, you saw the thread before I did.
Spread the message, brother (or sister?); hydric acid is an environmental toxin, and it’s all over the place! Imagine the Superfund cleanup this is going to require.
Stranger
Why isn’t someone doing something? It’s all a conspiracy, I tells ya!
My dad works at a mental hospital and they have to watch some patients to monitor their water intake. Somehow, some of them know they can become intoxicated from excess consumption. Sad to report, but if unwatched, some will drink straight from the toilet.