Difference Between Distilled Water & Purified Water
People have lots of perceptions and assumptions about the safety of their drinking water. The main thing is how much they really know about the water they drink and the type of water they should drink.
Natural resources of water are facing great threats from varying climatic conditions, contamination, and the swiftly increasing population. Pollutants comprises heavy metals, harmful chemicals, micro-organisms, inorganic composites etc. that can be present in your regular tap water.
Therefore, it is up to you to make sure your drinking water does not contain any pollutants that can harm your wellbeing. There are several ways to convert your tap water into fresh drinking water like filtering system, distillation, etc.
Water purifiers and distillation process are among most common ways to purify regular tap water. However, it can be difficult to decide which one is the best.
What Is Distilled Water?
Distilled water is created through the distillation method.
Distillation is a procedure where the contaminated water is boiled to produce pure water, free of its contaminants.
Most of the contaminants in the contaminated include non-living minerals, harmful metals, etc. Those contaminants need a very high boiling and melting point.
So water is boiled at a very high temperature, and then water turns into vapors leaving the impurities behind. Then vapors are cooled down and come to be distilled water.
Advantages Of Distilled Water
A method from nature’s book
The distillation process is very much like natural water cycle of planet Earth, which is the most convenient ways to generate the fresh drinking water.
In both, natural water cycle and distillation method, where water is evaporated and then vapors cool down and take back the form of fresh water.
Get rid of contaminants
When water is treated with distillation process, it get rid of all the contaminants from the water like harmful chemicals, heavy metals, pesticides, arsenic along with some radioactive toxins in few cases.
Helps in averting gastrointestinal problems
Some microorganisms like bacteria, virus, and parasites that can be found in water and can be very harmful for body and cause many painful stomach related infections and other issues.
Distillation can remove microorganisms and can help you prevent any stomach problems and other diseases caused by unclean water.
Less expensive than a bottled water
Water purified from a distillation machine at your home will cost you a lot lesser than buying bottled distilled water. You will be able to get the same bottled water in a lot lesser, just sitting at your home.
Healthier than spring water
Some of the experts believe that distilled water is healthier than spring water as it can contain many impurities. However, many people prefer spring water as the spring water bottles have pictures of mountains and running water. But this can be very deceptive.
Because, many spring water bottles contain simple tap water, which can be harmful for the body. On other hand, bottled distilled water should go through the complete process of distillation.
Disadvantages Of Drinking Distilled Water
Continual consumption can lead to dangerous effects
Long-term usage of distilled water might not be very healthy, especially if someone drinks distilled water during fasting.
It may perhaps lead to loss of vital elements in body like sodium, chloride, magnesium, potassium, etc. human body requires these elements to function appropriately.
Takes longer than other methods of purifying the water
Distillation process takes a lot longer than the other methods of water purification. In addition, it requires lots of energy to purify the water. You are basically emitting excess carbon and wastage when using distillation process to purify the tap water.
Can increase the acidity level in the body
When water is purified with distillation process, it becomes an active absorber. When this purified water gets in touch with the air, it starts absorbing the carbon dioxide from the air and generating a carbonic acid solution.
If you drink this water, it can lead to creation of more acidic elements in your stomach, which can disrupt your digestive system. To avoid bad digestive system, you might have rely on medications, which will keep the level of the acidic elements in control.
Distilled water may lead to seepage of harmful elements from its containers
Water is a universal solvent. If your bottled distilled water tastes funny, it could be because distilled water might lead to seepage of chemicals from the plastic bottle, especially in the case of low-grade plastic bottles.
When water becomes more acidic due to its exposure to the carbon dioxide in air, its dissolution feature becomes more destructive, which means plastic bottles will react to distilled water in more quicker and hostile way.
Water, being the universal solvent, may also dissolve these water bottles given the right circumstances.
Long-term consumption may lead to mineral deficiencies in the body
The too much drinking of distilled water might cause mineral deficiency in your body. This is considered true because of the reason that when water is boiled during distillation,
it also leaves the healthy minerals behind. And because of this, it is also believed that distilled water also eradicate both organic and inorganic mineral deposits from the body.
Might impact your dental health
As distilled water does not carry any healthy minerals, it might also not carry fluoride, which can usually be found in regular tap water.
Though there is no concrete proof, some dentists think that deficiency of fluoride in body might lead to cavity problems in children who consume distilled water and other purified bottled water.
Can lead to electrolyte discrepancy
Electrolytes exist in human body, and their proper balance plays a very vital role in proper functioning of body cells and organs. Some of the most common electrolytes found in human body are include bicarbonate, potassium, sodium, and chloride.
According to some studies, it has been stated that consumption of distilled water can disturb the balance of electrolytes in body. It might lead to losing essential electrolytes from the body.
And this electrolyte imbalance might lead to health issues like light-headedness, exhaustion, muscle spasms and in some cases, organ failure. In addition, drinking water during fasting might lead to unwanted consequences for your body.
What Is Purified Water?
Purified Water is like any other water that goes through water purification systems like capacitive deionization, reverse osmosis, carbon filtering, ultraviolet oxidation, etc.
The purification process eradicates any undesirable mineral deposits, elements, or impurities. Water purification systems are quite easy to set up in your home into your home and does not take much space.
Advantages Of Drinking Purified Water
Tastes and smells better
Purified water tastes and smells better. Since it does not contain any chemicals like chlorine, and foul elements or microorganisms, it is fresh and free from any funny taste or smell.
Water containing microorganisms that can lead to diseases like cause diarrhoea, queasiness, and in some cases, organ failure, or death. Water purifiers eradicate those microorganisms to make your tap water into safe drinking water.
Does not contain harmful substances
Water purification systems remove any kind of harmful toxins like lead or arsenic from the water and make it fresh and drinkable for consumption by people. It prevents any hazardous elements from entering into the body.
Reduce the dangers of harmful diseases
Consumption of purified water brings down the risks of diseases like colon cancer, bladder cancer, etc. by taking out chlorine and its by-products from water and converting it into fresh drinking water. Consuming uncontaminated water also safeguards the body gastrointestinal ailments and helps in living a healthy life.
Helps in weight loss
If you are struggling with your excess weight, drinking purified water can help you lose your weight. Even many dieticians suggest their clients to drink lots of water in a day as it improves the digestion and metabolic rate, which ultimately leads burning of fats on a quicker rate and makes you feel healthy and energetic throughout the day.
Detoxify your body
Fresh drinking water is perhaps one of the best cleansers for your body as it helps in removing toxins and makes your feel refreshed and revitalized throughout the day. Water flushes out any impurities from body and improves the overall balance and functioning of the body.
Purified water helps in proper absorption of nutrients
Water is a very effective and useful form of nutrient for human body. In addition, it also helps human body in adsorbing other nutrients effectively and efficiently.
Purified water helps in transporting and absorbing of all other important nutrients like oxygen into the body cells. Moreover, water also helps in getting rid of metabolic residuals and contaminants from your body.
Disadvantages Of Purified Water
Installation and maintenance of purifiers can be expensive
This is one of the leading disadvantages of having water purifiers. Producing purified water at your home could be expensive because of the costs you might have to pay for installation of a water filter and pipes.
Together with the continuing expenditures of upholding the purifier system and switching filter equipment as they come to be inundated while cleaning the water of its impurities for a long time. Basically, obtaining purified water is more expensive than drinking regular tap water.
Purifying tap water results in excess wastage
If you have a water purifier system installed at your home, you must have noticed the amount of water that goes wastage when the purifier is producing purified water.
It is said that approximately 4 gallons water is wasted to produce 1 gallon of purified water if water supply from your municipality arrives with good pressure.
With the way water sources of fresh water are depleting in the world, wasting large amount of water to produce small amount does not look like a very profitable deal.
Water purifiers consume lots of energy
Water purifier system use large amount of energy to produce purified waters.
Purifier systems that operate on methods like ultraviolet filtering or reverse osmosis to purify the water uses lots of electrical energy to generate fresh drinking water.
That means, directly or indirectly, water purifier system does contribute towards emission of carbon elements in the environment.
Process can be time-consuming
Water purification systems consumes lots of time to produce purified water. This may mean that it takes longer for a faucet or pitcher to produce drinkable water. In the case of a major water utility, it can mean that customers may have to wait for purified water when resources are limited, such as during a drought.
Purified system might not be able to remove pesticides
It is a common knowledge that pesticides that are used in farming can leach into water supply lines nearby. Water, which is supplied from the city municipality, is treated for removing contaminants like pesticides from water.
However, if you are using bore well water, you might not be aware of the contaminants that might be present in your water. Your water purifier can remove the contaminants like chloride, microorganisms, lead, arsenic, other heavy metals etc.
But might not be very successful in removing pesticides from the water, which could have harmful effects on your body in the long-term.
Are Distilled Water And Purified Water Similar In Their Functioning?
After reading about distilled and purified water, it may look like both are same. But that is not what happens.
Purified and distilled have some common factors:
- Both improve the quality of water.
- Both the processes have been designed to remove impurities from the contaminated water.
- Largely, both the waters are considered safe for human consumption and household use.
- Both can be expensive and time-consuming.
- Both use large amounts of water.
Factors that make one process different from other:
- You will many techniques to purify your tap water, but there is only one way to create distilled water.
- Purified water might contain some amount of essential minerals, but distilled water does not have any mineral deposits left behind.
- Distilled water has bland taste, but that is not the case with purified water.
distilled water or purified water: Which Is A Better Option?
Both distilled and purified water have their positive and negative aspects. Both function in the same way, to get rid of all the impurities from water, and provide safe drinking water.
Some believe that purified water can be less costly as compared to distilled water, and carries some minerals that are important for your body. But then this is also believed that food is the main source of minerals and other nutrients for human body, and not water.
So that means, distilled water can also be used at times to meet your body’s water requirements. Basically, many debated have been going on amongst the water fraternities it can be very difficult for one to choose,
which water is better. You can choose the one you like, based on your locality and other circumstances. Perhaps it will not make much difference.