RO/DI Water Safe To Use

[RezReef]

Would the RO/DI Water be safe to use for a babies formula?

[phi delt reefer]

Use ro water only (you can put a tee between the membrane and resin to access it in demand).

Everything I have read recommends not drink ro/di water but I am not sure why or the science behind it. No point in taking risks with newborns:mrgreen:

[spawn]

I was told that because of the being De-ionized that bacteria is able to form/grow in the column way faster & with no purification traces in it that it's not safe.

[bkelly]

no , dont use RODI, only RO, I think the DI strips the water of too many trace elements then kinda like a sponge when you drink it, definitely not for a child or adult.

[mike31154]

Just thinking out loud here and not really recommending anything in particular, but don't we strip everything out of the water for our tanks and then rely on the salt mix to provide everything the inhabitants need? Would that not be the same scenario with adding baby formula to absolutely pure water?

I've also read the warnings about DI stripping your body of trace elements etc, but never from any real scientific perspective, always some health 'expert' or something. I don't drink DI personally, but since I have the RODI system now, I use RO water for coffee, tea, some cooking and general purpose drinking water. I figure by adding gatorade to one of my water bottles for soccer games, I'm getting back some of the electrolyte lost through perspiration. I tend to side with the argument that you wouldn't be able to drink sufficient pure water to cause any ill effects, provided you have a good diet otherwise. I don't use DI since the resin is costly, my RO gets 0 TDS most of the time anyhow. I think one of the other reasons people don't tend to drink DI is because it has absolutely no taste whatsoever. That's easily remedied by adding a mix of your preference. I've been making my own carbonated water in 2 liter pop bottles using my CO2 cylinder. I don't run a kalk reactor, just use the CO2 for making fizzy water.

[ScubaSteve]

RO would be good (removes bromine, chlorine, etc) but RODI would be too aggressive for a child, heck even an adult. I know some people do drink RODI but it's not actually safe as it strips salts from your body. There have actually been cases of people dying from drinking only RODI in the summer time when their bodies are already stressed for minerals. If you want me to go into the reason why RODI does this I can but I'll save you the science mumbojumbo for now. In big RODI systems for drinking water they actually, by law, have to add minerals back into the water for it to be safe. RO doesn't get to as low concentrations so it's not as much as a worry.

I have a business that makes water desalination tech and I love to talk about this stuff, so feel free to ask questions.

[RezReef]

Thank you all for your helpful information...

[daniella3d]

RO/DI are primary sold for drinking water. They are not made to be used for aquarium :)

That said, I would not use it as the main source of water due to the lack of mineral and trace element. If someone drink too much of this pure water then this can lead to water poisoning. We do need mineral salts in our drinking water to compensate for what we lose in sweat.




Would the RO/DI Water be safe to use for a babies formula?

[phi delt reefer]

ro is primarily sold as drinking water system are they not? I haven't seen many consumer units with a di stage.

with that said - they do sell a lot of DI only stages to people in the window cleaning and automotive detailing businesses.

[Rogue951]

DI is not used for standard drinking water.
If you look at any residential home purification system (anything at rona, home depot) You'll see none of them use DI.

Stick with the earlier advise. Put a T after the RO and use just RO for your baby.
I use RO for my coffee just to reduce the likelyhood of calcium build up in the boiler. (I use a Keurig K cup machine)


RO/DI are primary sold for drinking water. They are not made to be used for aquarium :)

That said, I would not use it as the main source of water due to the lack of mineral and trace element. If someone drink too much of this pure water then this can lead to water poisoning. We do need mineral salts in our drinking water to compensate for what we lose in sweat.

[reefermadness]

My baby loves RO/DI.....

Her formula was made with RO/DI and no issues at all....she's fine. Yes it's very pure water....but than you mix it with a whole lot of stuff....its not gonna harm anyone and I feel safer with that than tap water.

I personally drink plain RO/DI and don't think anything of it. I think the old wives tale that it's too pure and is bad for you is false. Think about desani......it's 8ppm. That is not a lot....if I take a drink of water that is very pure and 0ppm....well by the time it hits my stomach its going to mix with god knows what and it will be more than 8ppm. Infact if I was worried I would just add the smallest pinch of salt to my glass of RO/DI water....and then I would have desani.

If someone can show me one reliable scientific article telling me otherwise I will surely change my habit.

[mike31154]

My baby loves RO/DI.....

Her formula was made with RO/DI and no issues at all....she's fine. Yes it's very pure water....but than you mix it with a whole lot of stuff....its not gonna harm anyone and I feel safer with that than tap water.

I personally drink plain RO/DI and don't think anything of it. I think the old wives tale that it's too pure and is bad for you is false. Think about desani......it's 8ppm. That is not a lot....if I take a drink of water that is very pure and 0ppm....well by the time it hits my stomach its going to mix with god knows what and it will be more than 8ppm. Infact if I was worried I would just add the smallest pinch of salt to my glass of RO/DI water....and then I would have desani.

If someone can show me one reliable scientific article telling me otherwise I will surely change my habit.

This is kind of where I was going in my earlier post, the RODI is being mixed with something, in this case baby formula, in my case Gatorade for sports. I don't see the rationale in comparing RO and DI, saying one is ok for drinking and the other will strip all your bodily minerals.

According to my TDS meter, my 75 gpd RO membrane provides 0 TDS water after running for about 5 minutes. I still run it through the DI stage for my aquarium, but it's lasting forever since it doesn't need to work very hard when it's already getting 0 or worst case 1 TDS water from the RO stage. This is from a source TDS of 210 to 220 with all kinds of goodies (and baddies) in it. Sure I can get the city's annual or monthly water quality report from their site, but who knows what seasonal, monthly, daily fluctuations go on in between. And if my RO TDS did happen to be 5 or 8 or 10 instead of 0, I really have no way of telling what that TDS is made up of. Could be beneficial or could be useless or even harmful. So I'm quite content in using the RO for general drinking purposes and getting most of my required minerals through a proper diet, meaning food, not liquid. The glass or two of pure RO that I drink daily without mixing with something does not make me nervous about depleting anything that won't be replaced by some healthy grub.

[The Grizz]

My whole house runs off a huge RO system with 0 tds. Before we put in an offer I had the water tested and the test revealed that our water was better for you then store bought water.myself I feel the same as the others how consume RO water, nothing 100% pure can be harmful for the body. Just my 2 pennies worth.:biggrin:

[asylumdown]

Biologically speaking, there's no risk to drinking DI water over any other kind of fresh water.

a) The difference in concentration of ions between tap water and DI water is practically non-existent compared to the concentration difference between drinking water and the fluids in our cells and blood. Yes, injecting pure DI water into your blood will lead to cytolysis, but so will injecting regular tap water. Our stomach and intestinal cells have spent hundreds of millions of years adapting to fresh water, DI water won't phase them one bit

b) DI water can't possibly strip you of anything. Strip it how? First, your stomach is a specific kind of two way street, digestive enzymes and acid out, nutrients and water in (unless you have an ulcer). Our food all has wildly different concentrations of ions and minerals, some lower than what's in our blood and some higher. Not only is there no mechanism in for that to lead to nutrients bleeding out in to your stomach when you eat or drink something with a low concentration of a particular ion, there's actually all sorts of systems in place to force the uptake of certain nutrients against a concentration gradient.

c) even if somehow the DI water was able to get ions or minerals to dissolve out of your blood back in to your stomach, it would all get re-absorbed in it's day long trip through your intestines.

d) The instant you swallow a glass of DI water, it stops being DI water. It mixes with your saliva first, then the juices in your stomach. By the time that water reaches your kidneys no one in the molecular jungle could tell the difference between water that came from a DI solution, or regular top water. We have a very elaborate system of organs and membranes whose sole job it is to maintain appropriate ion concentrations in the right places. Assuming you also eat (and I promise you, no one in N. America is lacking salt in their diet), the absence of ions in DI water is completely irrelevant to that process. I refer to point A: once the water hits your stomach the difference between tap and DI water disappears.

e) we (industrialized nations) don't get a significant portion of any ion or mineral from the water we drink on a day to day basis, regardless of what kind of water that is. That all comes from our food, and in most cases we get it in gross excess (mmmmm salty french fries). Not getting any calcium or magnesium or salt or nitrogen or what have you in DI water will neither somehow force you to lose those substances (refer to points about kidneys, organs and membranes), nor will it be missed if you ever also eat.

f) there's only one kind of fresh water poisoning, it's called hyper-hydrosis. drinking DI water will only do it to you if you drink say 10 gallons of it in an hour. But then, drinking 10 gallons of tap water in an hour will also do it to you. It will happen if you drink more water than your kidneys can possibly eliminate really quickly, causing the concentration gradients between your cells and your blood to get out of whack enough to become dangerous. That requires a near compulsive consumption of water, and will happen if you drink any kind of water that is hypotonic to your blood in high enough quantities (which is all potable water)

Commercially produced DI water is considered unfit for human consumption because of the industrial resins they use to produce it. It's not intended for human consumption so there's no safety testing in place to guarantee that the myriad of strong acid and strong base cation and anion resins producing any one batch aren't leaving poisonous chemicals in the water or leaving it dangerously acidic or basic. This might also be true for the kinds of resins we use, but if that's true, it's a danger from the resin, not the absence of ions in the water.

aaaaand, I'm getting off my soap box :)

[daniella3d]

It's not going to strip anything from your body. Your body does that in itself when you sweat!

It's just that drinking too much pure water when you sweat a lot can lead to water poisoning. Google water poisoning and you'll learn about that.

It's a very low risk though, but I suggest to anyone doing exercise and sweating to mix mineral salt with the RO/DI like the Gatorade powder, to get back what your body naturally lose.

RODI just does not contain any mineral so it cannot replenish what you lose. Very simple.

If you don't sweat then no need to worry. If you taste your sweat you will see it is salty, and that's a whole lot of mineral going out of your body.

RODI is not going to be more rich in mineral by going through your stomach, or by swallowing it! it does not remove anything and it does not add anything beside pure H2O, period.

Stop thinking that it's going to be mineral rich water by the process of swallowing, because what you have in mineral in your body is what you have, nothing more, nothing less. It's not going to grow or multiply when mixed in your stomach.

Water poisoning happens when someone sweat too much and drink too much water without adding mineral to it. It is a big risk to marathon runners especially those running in very hot weather. I don't think it's much risky for the average person.


Biologically speaking, there's no risk to drinking DI water over any other kind of fresh water.

a) The difference in concentration of ions between tap water and DI water is practically non-existent compared to the concentration difference between drinking water and the fluids in our cells and blood. Yes, injecting pure DI water into your blood will lead to cytolysis, but so will injecting regular tap water. Our stomach and intestinal cells have spent hundreds of millions of years adapting to fresh water, DI water won't phase them one bit

b) DI water can't possibly strip you of anything. Strip it how? First, your stomach is a specific kind of two way street, digestive enzymes and acid out, nutrients and water in (unless you have an ulcer). Our food all has wildly different concentrations of ions and minerals, some lower than what's in our blood and some higher. Not only is there no mechanism in for that to lead to nutrients bleeding out in to your stomach when you eat or drink something with a low concentration of a particular ion, there's actually all sorts of systems in place to force the uptake of certain nutrients against a concentration gradient.

c) even if somehow the DI water was able to get ions or minerals to dissolve out of your blood back in to your stomach, it would all get re-absorbed in it's day long trip through your intestines.

d) The instant you swallow a glass of DI water, it stops being DI water. It mixes with your saliva first, then the juices in your stomach. By the time that water reaches your kidneys no one in the molecular jungle could tell the difference between water that came from a DI solution, or regular top water. We have a very elaborate system of organs and membranes whose sole job it is to maintain appropriate ion concentrations in the right places. Assuming you also eat (and I promise you, no one in N. America is lacking salt in their diet), the absence of ions in DI water is completely irrelevant to that process. I refer to point A: once the water hits your stomach the difference between tap and DI water disappears.

e) we (industrialized nations) don't get a significant portion of any ion or mineral from the water we drink on a day to day basis, regardless of what kind of water that is. That all comes from our food, and in most cases we get it in gross excess (mmmmm salty french fries). Not getting any calcium or magnesium or salt or nitrogen or what have you in DI water will neither somehow force you to lose those substances (refer to points about kidneys, organs and membranes), nor will it be missed if you ever also eat.

f) there's only one kind of fresh water poisoning, it's called hyper-hydrosis. drinking DI water will only do it to you if you drink say 10 gallons of it in an hour. But then, drinking 10 gallons of tap water in an hour will also do it to you. It will happen if you drink more water than your kidneys can possibly eliminate really quickly, causing the concentration gradients between your cells and your blood to get out of whack enough to become dangerous. That requires a near compulsive consumption of water, and will happen if you drink any kind of water that is hypotonic to your blood in high enough quantities (which is all potable water)

Commercially produced DI water is considered unfit for human consumption because of the industrial resins they use to produce it. It's not intended for human consumption so there's no safety testing in place to guarantee that the myriad of strong acid and strong base cation and anion resins producing any one batch aren't leaving poisonous chemicals in the water or leaving it dangerously acidic or basic. This might also be true for the kinds of resins we use, but if that's true, it's a danger from the resin, not the absence of ions in the water.

aaaaand, I'm getting off my soap box :)

[cwatkins]

RO/DI are primary sold for drinking water. They are not made to be used for aquarium :)

I have never seen a consumer system (in person) or a water store using a D/I stage. (This isn't to say tons people have them installed...)

The water you can buy from the grocery store only goes through a carbon and an R/O stage (if you're lucky!, sometimes it's just carbon!).

The water you buy from the "pure water store" goes through multiple carbon stages, UV stage, then R/O, etc.

All the bottled water you buy (Dasani, etc) doesn't go throgh D/I, as per the mineral content listing. If it did, there wouldn't be any minerals to list.

With our newborn we keep a juice pitcher next to the kettle and just boil a couple litres of tap water each morning and then once it's cooled down, we fill up the juice pitcher. Then this is used for formula water throughout the day. Just ensure to clean the pitcher every now and then.

[naesco]

My baby loves RO/DI.....

Her formula was made with RO/DI and no issues at all....she's fine. Yes it's very pure water....but than you mix it with a whole lot of stuff....its not gonna harm anyone and I feel safer with that than tap water.

I personally drink plain RO/DI and don't think anything of it. I think the old wives tale that it's too pure and is bad for you is false. Think about desani......it's 8ppm. That is not a lot....if I take a drink of water that is very pure and 0ppm....well by the time it hits my stomach its going to mix with god knows what and it will be more than 8ppm. Infact if I was worried I would just add the smallest pinch of salt to my glass of RO/DI water....and then I would have desani.

If someone can show me one reliable scientific article telling me otherwise I will surely change my habit.

How about a leading manufacturer of the ro/di systems, Spectapure telling you not to do it and why!


""""""IS DRINKING DI WATER OK?

When it comes to drinking DI water, there are many different thoughts on it. First thing you should understand is that DI water has all minerals removed. If ALL you were drinking was DI water and you did not eat anything, it would be harmful. Cells in the body need electrolytes (salts) to stay active and produce more cells. So, if you are not replenishing the electrolytes, the cells could not survive. To better illustrate this: Imagine that you have two batteries. One batter is connected to a glass container filled with tap water, the other is filled with DI water. Tap water is able to conduct the electricity through it because of the minerals. DI water cannot because the lack of minerals. It is only when you add salt to the DI water, that you would be able to conduct electricity.

DI water does not necessarily harm your health unless it is the only thing that you are putting into your body. We would not recommend drinking it because of its flat taste and because DI resins are not made of food grade approved material.

[cathyg_99]

just get a large kettle and boil water, let it cool and use it from there till its all gone, then refill it and boil it again thats all we did for my newborn

[reefermadness]

How about a leading manufacturer of the ro/di systems, Spectapure telling you not to do it and why!


""""""IS DRINKING DI WATER OK?

When it comes to drinking DI water, there are many different thoughts on it. First thing you should understand is that DI water has all minerals removed. If ALL you were drinking was DI water and you did not eat anything, it would be harmful. Cells in the body need electrolytes (salts) to stay active and produce more cells. So, if you are not replenishing the electrolytes, the cells could not survive. To better illustrate this: Imagine that you have two batteries. One batter is connected to a glass container filled with tap water, the other is filled with DI water. Tap water is able to conduct the electricity through it because of the minerals. DI water cannot because the lack of minerals. It is only when you add salt to the DI water, that you would be able to conduct electricity.

DI water does not necessarily harm your health unless it is the only thing that you are putting into your body. We would not recommend drinking it because of its flat taste and because DI resins are not made of food grade approved material.

Did you even read this thing. Firstly spectrapure is a company thats all. Pretty sure they are not scientists or doctors. Second they don't even make a clear statement, basically they are saying if you eat or drink anything other than RO/DI water than drinking some RO/DI water is should be fine. And thats my stance....so I guess we are in agreement.

As for the lack of salts....well we all take care of that by eating and drinking other things. Most people arent lacking salt....but if you are really concerned you can add a pinch of salt (sodium chloride) and/or epsom (magnesium sulfate)