Sodium Ions and Potable Water

Hello PW,

"Generally, waters that are extremely low in dissolved substances are reckoned to be bad for consumption, as the body requires trace minerals from water in order to build the more complex molecules found in biological systems. No-one in their right mind would drink ultrapure water intended for use in silicon chip washing processes, as it is far too pure and because of it, far too aggressive."

This seems to be an ongoing debate and I have had to research this subject at my place of employment for months. Can you site any credible medical studies that trace minerals from WATER (64ozs a day) are required by our bodies? Or that reverse osmosis filtered or distilled water depletes our cells of minerals because it is more aggressive than mineral water or tap water?

TelsaFan, you're right on about some of these water treatment companies!

My wife bought this house we live in that's in a small village in upstate NY. Well guess what? The precious previous owner of the house had a water softener installed in the basement. The village supplies treated water that has relatively low amount of iron, manganese, sulfur, etc. All within or quite below the suggested limits. So the softener is totally unnecessary. When I married my current wife (both our 2nd marriage) and moved in, I had the water treatment equipment company (THE BIGGIE who I will not mention) remove the blasted thing because it was a total waste of money, plus it elevated the sodium levels in our drinking water. I am slightly hypertensive and didn't need that kind of crapploa in my water supply!!!!

Well, you can only guess how much of a stink they put up when I ordered it removed. Eventually they saw it my way after I mentioned to them 15 minutes into the phone call that I was a Licensed PE who specialized in water treatment. Needless to say the other end of the phone went dead stone silent for a short period of time while it finally dawned on them who they had been trying to hood-wink with their typical gobbledy-gook water treatment techno language shit they had been throwing at me.....well golly, do I look like Barney Fife or Sheriff Andy???? *LOL*

Have a great sunny day!

The US EPA provides a wealth of information about allowable contaminant and mineral content in water drinking water, both in a technical format, and in versions written for the less technically oriented public.

Unfortunately, the USEPA does not regulate or have a "Contaminant Threshold" in regards to Sodium content in public drinking water supplies...or at least the last time I looked they didn't.

If you suffer from hypertension, most doctors will suggest that you avoid drinking water that contains over 150 to 200 mg/L Sodium content....either that or you treat it!

Have a great sunny day!

We had a client come in a few weeks back and said he was on a low sodium diet that he followed religiously, but every time he went to the doctor his sodium level was high. He was baffled until he remembered their home had a softener system installed, the source of his salt intake. Unfortunately some water filtration equipment companies, even some major ones, sell (push) softeners when they are not really needed because the customers water is not "hard". Most people on city water usually want to get rid of chlorine, fluoride and maybe iron and a softener system is not required for that.

GA to PW. There are several approaches to good drinking water. When considering ones total dietary sources of minerals, water is not very high on the list. World health, EPA, and Canada have the same standard for sodium of a maximum of 200 mg/L of sodium as Na. For those individuals on sodium free diets (hypertension and renal) the recommended limit is 20 mg/L. For bottled water to be considered sodium free the level should be less than 5 mg/L. Conductivity ( a quick and dirty method of measuring total dissolved solids or TDS) is often used as a method of finding the level of TDS in drinking water. These levels vary and acceptability is as variable from consumer to consumer. When sodium is the dominant cation, taste thresholds can be as low as 1500 uS/cm2 but when calcium and magnesium are dominant then conductivities for acceptable water quality can rise to as high as 2400 or sometimes higher. When sulphate SO4) is a dominant the measured anion conductivity will be lower than what the total ions will measure.

Many individual wells and municipal water supplies are considered hard . Softening is often very desirable. Often water replaces the Ca and Mg ions with an equivalent of Na (if you measure hardness as mg/L of CaCO3 you can get the amount of sodium added, in addition to the background sodium, to the water by dividing this hardness level by 2.176). Potassium (K)salts are often used in lieu of sodium salts to avoid the added sodium in softened water. Potassium also has some drawbacks for certain users by allowing more fluid to collect around the heart or for those individuals with bladder (IC) problems. I would suggest that you get a good analysis of your water and bring the results to a good physician for consultation if you have doubts. Hard water can be directed to specified taps so that you can actually consume hard water instead of softened water. PW has said that municipal water is cheap and it is also regulated so that frequent safety of the water is monitored. I do agree but municipal water can still be very hard but acceptable by EPA or WHO standards ( Hardness is not a directly regulated parameter).

Flat water can be caused by an imbalance of certain ions and particularly when sulphate is dominant as an anion (>250 mg/L). Sparkling water can be produced from natural carbonation or added in bottled water by CO2. CO2 can occur in ground water naturally and is a byproduct of bacterial action. The CO2 has been allowed to accumulate in a confined aquifer and the concentrations can become higher than saturatrion. You may also see some bubbling in a contaminated water supply so be careful.

Overall the water should be aesthetically pleasing, odourless, clear, safe from a chemical, bacterial, and radiological point of view. Physical parameters should be acceptable with regard to conductivity, pH, colour, turbidity, and corrosive index. Hope this helps.

Thank you all for the replies,

but to be less technical, don't we have an acceptable margin for each component, take for the example the blood test, you have an averaged acceptable margin to which you can compare your results...

Regards,

The local authority can analyse and report on water quality under its obligations to monitor and advise on issues that might affect public health. In the UK, a basic chemical and biological analysis report can be had for around £75GBP and their telephone numbers are in the local telephone directory. If there is an issue with anything in the water, they will advise on simple treatment steps that can reduce the magnitude of the concern into safe limits in the covering letter that accompanies the report.