[thescriptkiddie]

Sorry, but you really don't want to be drinking true deionized water. It isn't a about long term mineral loss, it is about the immediate discomfort of drinking it. It's fine for the first cup or two, but after that it starts to burn. Wash your hands with it and you'll find you skin is dry and cracking. You'll notice that reverse osmosis systems intended for producing drinking water have a much lower standard of purity than those intended for, say, washing glassware. If you want to make sure there is no lead in your drinking water a carbon filter with an ion exchange resin stage is the way to go. But really, get over it, 99% of the US has safe tap water.

[Laforet]

>It's fine for the first cup or two, but after that it starts to burn. Wash your hands with it and you'll find you skin is dry and cracking.

I have handled and, against my better judgement, quaffed many types of deionised water: triple glass distilled, reverse osmosis, ion exchange, etc. They taste more or less the same to store-bought distilled water and I have not yet had any of the ailments in your complaint. There is also a certain coworker who developed a pechant for the MilliQ water machine and regularly filled her drink bottle with ultrapure (>18.2 megaohms) water there. Suffice to say she is still doing it.

>But really, get over it, 99% of the US has safe tap water

This is not necesarily true given the state of water infrastructure in the US. The water leaving a treatment plant is not the same as water coming out of a tap.

[coryrc]

Water departments are supposed to do surveys at residential taps to evaluate the effect of alkalinity on lead in the water as it is actually drank. Even the small town I came from does. Seattle, for example, made some changes based on these surveys: http://www.seattle.gov/util/MyServices/Water/Water_Quality/W...

[makomk]

Water departments have been cheating on those surveys to get the right results. That's one of the causes of this scandal.

[thescriptkiddie]

For what it's worth, I could be mistaken. The storebought deionized water I get could be contaminated with carbonic acid, which would explain the burning.

[Laforet]

Distilled water tends to exhibit an acidic because there are nk dissolved salts to buffer against atomspheric carbon dioxide which forms carbonic acid once dissolved. However I would be very surprised if store bought water contains enough CO2 to irritate human skin, unless you meant carbolic acid instead of carbonic acid.