Interesting point. Would distillation clean water from any contamination or are there common chemicals that would evaporate and then condense at similar temperatures as the water?
Boiling water for a few minutes is a common way to get rid of biological contamination.
The most common chemical is ethanol. What you're describing is an azeotrope [1].
Aside from the ones that will boil together with water are those that will boil off before the water (methanol is the other common example that comes in practice). If you have any that boil off before water you have to know at what point it's safe to start condensing the vapour and storing it.
I don't know, but 'distilled' water is typically sold as the most chemically pure form of water. I do know it needs to be remineralized or something, as pure distilled water is bad for you.
Your point is well taken, but if you have never witnessed it in extreme I believe you are not evaluating it fairly.
On ships, vacuum vapor distillation is quite common for drinking water production. This is because the equipment is used to generate boiler feed water, which must be high quality distillate. Acquiring additional water-making equipment is redundant.
Nutritional content can be limited and lacking diversity. Many minerals in the body are of very low concentration, they are nevertheless, necessary. Osmosis will delpete the body of these over time. The health effects of this would require a longterm study for chronic symptoms to appear. I have never seen any study of this nature. I have seen mariners after several months at sea with no other water source and, yes anecdotally, they look like hell. I will not drink distilled water for any length of time, but a few weeks would never amount to anything.
So in your day to day life, sure, you have a healthy, diverse, first-world diet and have no ill-effect from drinking distilled water. You can 'live' drinking only Coke. Appalling, certainly, but doable. In terms of cost and energy expense, distilled water is likely higher than Coke to produce, though that is an aside.
You're partially correct, but missed the important point here. As a result your advice is dangerous to health.
You don't want water picking up minerals from your body .. you want it DEPOSITING minerals into your body. That's the way we evolved obtaining minerals from water from streams where the water runs over rocks to mineralise.
Exactly. It's water. It's not bleach. If you take a multivitamin and eat a varied diet, there is no "magic" nutritional value lost. Water doesn't have to come out of a Voss water bottle or the ground to be "healthy".
I'm thinking demineralized water, of which distillation is several ways to produce it. The rub seems to be that it leeches minerals from both the body and distribution mechanisms (like metal piping)
You are pushing (incorrect) anecdotes, with a hubris of certainty.
Please provide quality references, or even some argument, to support your statement, beyond 'you said so'. 'You said so' is always a useless information-less way to communicate that I would push back on, but this is a health relevant issue, and you are spreading misinformation that is dangerous. Provide some quality references if you're right, but you're not.
> The preferred way to correct someone wrong on the internet is gently.
Many of us have had the “citation needed” demand thrown in our face in very rude ways during the COVID vaccine debacle. It’s gonna take some years for it to settle down and be forgotten again.
Boiling water for a few minutes is a common way to get rid of biological contamination.