What's the concentration of that vs the concentration here. Note that we also use chlorine to treat drinking water (e.g. on canoe trips), but you don't want to be drinking that unless it's very low concentration.
A quick google search suggests that they are used to "improve water clarity" [0], so at a guess you don't use enough of it to turn the water pink.
There's also the fact that they think it's concentrated enough that you should avoid bathing in it if you have sensitive skin. That certainly doesn't inspire confidence that you should drink it (exposing some very important skin, that's usually more sensitive).
If the pictures are true to the situation, the concentrations are tiny. You can look up videos of people putting less than a teaspoon into water to get the same result.
IIRC, PP can be a precursor to chlorine. But, you're comparing two different chemicals here and what applies to one likely doesn't apply to another.
There is a chance your skin will feel like it's burning if it's not fully dissolved in water. I wouldn't advise touching the dry powder. The shards will embed into your skin and it will feel like an open wound filled with Tabasco for a long time.
Fun-fact: If you mix it with glycerol it combusts, so don't use any lotions with it if you get some on your skin.
ETA: I don't know what's going on, but there's a lot of low-effort responses in this thread. Is it the hours?
Converting KMnO₄ to Cl¯ would require a nuclear reaction. Chlorides are generally soluble, so it's not going to cause an insoluble salt to slowly dissolve as a permanganate salt precipitates instead. It does appear to be a stronger oxidizing agent than Cl₂ (and Cl¯ and ClO¯ and ClO₂¯), but there are likely better reducing agents in most water than dissolved chlorine ions.
For what it's worth, permanganate is an extremely strong oxidizer (probably the second strongest stable solid oxidant known, after persulfate), but at neutral pH it is unable to oxidize chloride to hypochlorite and beyond. (The electrode potentials are too close, and anyways the maganese dioxide byproduct turns hypochlorite to chloride and oxygen.) Instead of reacting with a reducing agent in water, (the main possibilities are simple organics and ferrous iron, and these turn to carbon dioxide or insoluble ferric oxide [sidenote: this is why permanganate is added to water in the first place]) permanganate tends to break down to oxygen and manganese dioxide, which settles out.
I wish I knew enough about chemistry to know if you are providing valuable commentary or pulling our collective leg. I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
The allegation is that KMnO₄ is undergoing a redox reaction with HCl to produce Cl₂ gas (which is a plausible redox reaction, given the half-reaction potentials).
But yeah, in practice you're going to disinfect with Cl₂ gas or NaClO. The water plant I worked at switched from Cl₂ to ClO¯ as primary disinfectant, and the operators were all for it. No more need to manually switch out Cl₂ tanks, no more Cl₂ venting issues (spilling NaClO is nowhere near as bad a Cl₂ leak). (The plant also used O₃ for bonus disinfection as well. The operators hated it at first, but now would throw a conniption fit were it broken).
The chlorine in water will evaporate into the air if left in an open container; Pour yourself a glass of water, and let it stand for 30-60 minutes. It should then taste a LOT less Chlorine-y. Even in a sealed container you shouldn't be able to taste it after about 3 days. This is why water from a mains pipe tastes of chlorine, but the same water pumped into a water tank (for heating etc), doesn't.
The water is completely fine here. I'd not blame anyone for using a brita filter or something to save the kettle - but you're just throwing away water and energy on bottled water...
Having lived in London most of my life, and spent a few years in the US (MI), I can tell you we've got it good. I used to use bottled water in the US as I didn't enjoy drinking chlorine flavour/smelling water...
Bad drinking water IS the end of the world. Nonchalant cliches like this make the right to drink clean and clear water seem like something that is mostly fairly applied throughout the world.
He's not suggesting people buy potassium permangranate to purify their water. He's saying that the substance that is making the water pink is what people use all the time to purify water. That makes the assertion by the local government that the water is safe much more believable.
Too high doses of manganese are clearly linked to Parkinsonism. (If you want, I can list the sources.)
That however pertains to acute intake, not chronic.
To get manganese ions, you'd have to acidify the water somehow too.
Jeez, its not like they have to live with it from now on. The treatment facility made a mistake, one as harmless as putting food coloring in the water. As soon as there's new water in the system it'll run clear again. It's a fuckup, its inconvenient, and people may choose to use bottled water for a few days, but it doesn't mean that the government is made of tyrannical despots.
You are correct. I had only read a bit of the article before coming to the comments.
I should have been more diligent and usually am.
I was projecting other feelings from previous arguments and this isn't the place for it and I deserve those down votes as it clearly wasn't a super helpful addition to the discussion.
The "pink" amount appears to be in the range of 1-3mg/L. So the LD50 for an 80kg man would be ~30,000 liters orally. That would certainly be lethal. The rule of thumb for this stuff is also "If it's pink, it's safe to drink"[1], as in pink is the minimum concentration to ensure safety. The only reason to avoid higher concentrations is that it will stain heavily.
Not sure if you misunderstood the poster you replied to. People don't want pseudoscientific rationalizations for why their preferences don't matter, they want the basic as-pure-as-possible H2O that they paid for.
Trying to understand what you're saying -- I believe when you say "their preferences" you mean that people want "basic as-pure-as-possible H2O that they paid for". However, all water that we drink is purified by a wealth of processes. That's not pseudoscientific, that's real science. Our purification is the reason we don't get cholera, for example.
If you mean that people want non-pink water, I think that's reasonable. But I also think it's reasonable that the reason the pink color is explained by the actual purifying process. I too concede that the water controlling authorities screwed up by using too much of the chemical, but it seems not in a dangerous amount, and they did well to communicate exactly why, and they also conducted tests to ensure safety of the water, thus effectively following up and checking the potential problems with their screw-up.
As far as government mistakes go, I think this one was relatively mild and handled in an adequate manner.
randomdrake didn't read the article, and saw the top comment was "you can buy tablets to purify water". He assumed, completely incorrectly, that the commenter was suggesting that people should just buy tablets to purify their water. randomdrake was not trying to comment on how essential services should always be held to exacting standards and that any failure. They weren't trying to say that it is unacceptable for water supplies to have even harmless, temporary inconveniences. They just didn't read the article.
(the post you replied to is pointing out that the potassium permanganate that turned the water pink is not especially dangerous, not arguing that the people should be given more potassium permanganate)
A quick google search suggests that they are used to "improve water clarity" [0], so at a guess you don't use enough of it to turn the water pink.
There's also the fact that they think it's concentrated enough that you should avoid bathing in it if you have sensitive skin. That certainly doesn't inspire confidence that you should drink it (exposing some very important skin, that's usually more sensitive).
[0] http://www.livestrong.com/article/71333-use-potassium-perman...