[ars]

You aren't finding anything because it is not true. Ultra pure water does not become some kind of solvent.

It's the reverse problem: because the water is so pure it easily gets contaminated by minor things. So all the equipment has to be carefully cleaned.

[dylan604]

Water is a solvent. Not sure where you get that it's not.

From the closing of the first graph in the Wiki for water: Due to its presence in all organisms, its chemical stability, its worldwide abundance, and its strong polarity relative to its small molecular size, water is often referred to as the "universal solvent"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water

Edit: after enough searching I was finally able to find this article [0] that I was originally trying to find. The leaching part was right, but the bleaching part looks to have been as misremembered

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/super-kamiokande-neutrino-de...

[ars]

You misread what I wrote. Water is the same solvent as both regular water and ultrapure, I was replying to the ultrapure part.

Also: I appreciate you found a source, unfortunately it's not true what they said. It's not possible to "leech nutrients through the hair to the scalp", the wrench story is not true either - there is zero chance a lab with the standards they have would just leave a wrench at the bottom of the pool - it would contaminate the water. Not to mention the bottom is filled with more of those light tubes, so there is no place for a wrench to sit. (And if someone dropped one it would break a tube.)

I don't know why someone would tell businessinsider such stories, but they are not true.

And see: https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/7467/is-pure-w...

It's hard when a supposedly reliable news place writes things that are not true, but that's the world we live in. I guess technically they are just quoting stories they were told.

(My personal pet peeve is a news source that made everyone think you can't leave eggs outside the fridge if they were washed, (as they are in the US). This is not true, but "there's a news source".)

[IAmBroom]

I think people might be confusing ultra-pure water with "DI water" (deionized water).

DI water is AN AMAZING SOLVENT. Waaay more powerful at dissolving low-solubility solids than tap water, or even distilled water. It's stunning IRL to see how much better it cleans optical surfaces, where single-molecule layers can visibly change the appearance.

But if left open to the atmosphere, as in these pools, it would soon be just plain old (pure) water. Ultra-clean, but not an ultra-solvent.