The Quest for Better Drinking Water

This was written in reply to request from John asking what to tell his friends when they ask him about buying “Kangen Water” or one of the other water ionizers currently on the market.

“Water ionizer" devices depend on the addition of ordinary salt to make water more conductive. Applying an electrical current across what is now a dilute sodium chloride solution splits some of the water molecules into hydrogen gas and hydroxide ions at the negative electrode (the cathode). This produces an alkaline solution – essentially sodium hydroxide (NaOH) – which can be drawn off as “alkaline water.” At the opposite electrode, the anode, chloride ions are oxidized to elemental chlorine. If some of this chlorine is allowed to combine with some of the hydroxide ions produced at the cathode, it forms hypochlorous acid (HOCl), a weak acid and oxidizing agent. Some of these devices (e.g., Kangen Water) allow the user to draw off this solution for use as a disinfectant. In some cases the two streams can be combined to form a cleaning mixture consisting of both HOCl and sodium hypochlorite (equivalent to diluted ordinary laundry bleach).

Personally, I wouldn't consider sodium hydroxide a positive addition to my diet. Our water, here along the south Coast of California, is naturally high in conductivity (with enough sodium and chloride already in it) and is probably not helped by adding even more salt. The only real benefit to drinking Kangan water would be that produced by the placebo effect. Research has shown that the more you pay the greater the placebo effect. So spend more than you can afford; no expense is really too great for an improved home water system. However, if some of your friends are cost conscious, for a small fee I'd be willing to make a periodic visits to bless their drinking water – a blessing by Dr. Al being a lot more effective than any ionizer.

Generally speaking, an alkaline water is better for you. The main reason being that it contains higher concentrations of minerals. The most desirable minerals being calcium and magnesium, and to a lesser extent potassium. Water containing appreciable concentrations of calcium and magnesium is what we also call "hard" water. Hard water is better for you than soft water. But hard water is what naturally comes out of local faucets everywhere in our area (at least before going through our water softeners – hard water is better for you only if you actually drink it, washing with it is a whole different story). A naturally alkaline water doesn't necessarily have to be hard, but it almost always is (it can also be alkaline if it's very high in sodium, in which case it would not be considered "hard" water – and high sodium would not be considered good from any health standpoint).

When we generally talk about "minerals" in water we usually mean positively charged ions like calcium, magnesium and potassium (cations), but water is electrically neutral. If you hold one end of a magnet to the side of a glass of water the liquid doesn't come rushing to, or away from, that side. Therefore, to balance every positive charge carried by calcium, magnesium or potassium (or sodium – which together make up the big four) there must be an equivalent amount of ions with negative charge – called anions. We tend to forget about them, but they are minerals too – or come from minerals. (Minerals are also electrically neutral and as such are combinations of anions and cations, e.g., sodium chloride (salt), calcium carbonate (limestone), potassium nitrate (saltpeter), magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt), etc.)

The best anion you can have in your water is either carbonate or bicarbonate – dissolved carbon dioxide. The other choices are less desirable: nitrate, chloride or sulfate (these make up the anion big four). They present no real problem in low concentrations, but lots of problems when concentrations are high: nitrate (cancer), chloride (hypertension, etc.), sulfate (diarrhea, and I'm sure lots of other problems that I'm too lazy to look up). (Sometimes minor contributors, and everything else is very much minor, can be very important. Like fluoride – an anion. Or arsenic – a cation.) The point of all this being that before making any claims about the desirability of some kind of water, its pH, conductivity, alkalinity, hardness, etc., we would have to know something about the chemical balance that underlies those broader characteristics.

The real answer is that in this day and age, when we face no shortage of getting our minerals from lots of other sources, it doesn't really matter what the hell is in our water as long as it's clean (bacteria and virus free) and tastes good enough to make us want to drink it. (In times past, and not very long past at that, smart people drank wine or beer, or whatever, because most water was far from clean and tasted like shit – which was probably a far from inconsiderable ingredient.)

If you don't like the way your water tastes, or if you are concerned about a host of minor contaminants not ordinarily removed by standard conventional water treatment, then the most effective thing you can do is to filter it . . . through a carbon filter. Carbon removes taste and odors, and adsorbs impurities onto it's surface. Because removal via activated carbon is a surface adsorbtion phenomenon, the carbon has to be periodically replaced – so it requires periodic maintenance and some expense. So if friends insist on doing something to improve their water, tell 'em to do that. Forget about the placebo effect and save ‘em money. Carbon is even more effective than my personal blessing.

Clean, cheap, trustworthy water is what used to come out of all our taps. And, by and large, it still does. Clean tap-water, along with proper waste disposal (and not, as most of us assume, advances in medical science), was the secret ingredient in the longer life-spans we now enjoy. We seem to have gone insane over water in this country. I first experienced it as a kid over the issue of fluoridation. But the possibility that people would travel to buy water from a store and carry it home in plastic bottles – after paying more for it than they do for gas . . . often more than they pay for beer . . . If someone had told me that when I was younger I would have considered them insane – and made haste to keep my distance. And don't get me started about this whole business of dehydration and carrying a water bottle everywhere you go . . . as if we were all to just about to embark on a trip across the Sahara.

John also asked how he could make money on this craze. My advice would be to look around for the craziest idea out there, and buy stock in that company. As P.T. Barnum reputedly said, "no one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American Public." Words to live by.
Al