I would be wary of using a stainless steel RO system. Extremely pure water tends to leach more. You may avoid a bit of plastic in exchange for heavy metals. Stainless steel tends to be 10% Nickel, 10% Chromium, which are bad and worse for you. If you do so, I would recommend getting the water tested.
Otherwise I would recommend a good plastic RO system. One where the plastic doesn't leach loads of harmful plasticizers.
This is why I switched to a countertop electric water still. It boils a gallon of water in a few hours, then I just refill and plug it back in. The water tastes great too.
That sounds potentially dangerous? Distilled water lacks electrolytes, so you shouldn't drink in large quantities.
(And your comment on taste is interesting. Distilled water doesn't taste like anything (except possibly slight tingling if it "burns" your tongue), which is why minerals are often added to drinking water to make it taste "good")
The best numbers I'm seeing for calcium and magnesium indicate that it's only about 10% daily recommended dose in 2L of tap water. I'm pretty confident I'm eating enough veggies to make up for that loss. Also I'm a salt fiend so I get plenty of that from my food.
I find the water from my still tastes actually really good. It's silky smooth, nothing like distilled water that's been sitting in a gross plastic jug for weeks.
So I'm not at all concerned there is any risk at all.
> The best numbers I'm seeing for calcium and magnesium indicate that it's only about 10% daily recommended dose in 2L of tap water. I'm pretty confident I'm eating enough veggies to make up for that loss. Also I'm a salt fiend so I get plenty of that from my food.
It's not about nutritional intake, but the acute effects of ingesting it. If you put cells in distilled water, the cells absorb water due to osmosis and rupture. There may be some minor risk of chronic damage accumulated to the upper digestive tract (though I'm not an expert).
> I find the water from my still tastes actually really good. It's silky smooth, nothing like distilled water that's been sitting in a gross plastic jug for weeks.
Does it actually taste, or do you just enjoy not having a taste? If it has a taste, it is not entirely distilled; there are residual minerals and substances in it (which negate the potential risks of drinking it, at least from the previous point). However, that kind of defeats the "distilled" aspect of it...
The main source of microplastics in water bottles isn't the bottle that's the filters (and the residual amount in the bottle is pretty astonishing)