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“Real Water” that poisoned dozens contained chemical from rocket fuel
- beefman 3y agoHow much hydrazine was in the water?
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoWow. Quack products like this usually just do nothing. Poisoning people with hydrazine is impressively bad.
- netsharc 3y agoMan, I thought they'd just bottle tap water, what the fuck is all that black magic about putting the water through machines? Did these idiots maybe just bought the machine(s) from someone who was scamming them, and were just cluelessly following the instructions basically written in crayon?
- civilitty 3y ago> "These people were outrageous," Kemp said. There was "no safety testing, no analysis of the product to see what was in it." He said that the person who developed the water treatment process for Real Water bought the titanium tubes "from some Russian guy in the 80s" and spent four to five months making alkaline waters in his garage, working until he had a formula that didn't make him vomit or have diarrhea.
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoMmmm grayons.
- formerly_proven 3y agoAnd it’s not even marketed as an energy drink.
- SkipperCat 3y agoSo true... It is literally the closest thing I've ever seen to an actual, real life energy drink.
- e_y_ 3y agoOr a malt liquor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUwID1I5nXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUwID1I5nXc
- QuadmasterXLII 3y agoHealth fads that are tangibly idiotic but seem like just water are actually incredibly dangerous. The problem is that it’s either going to be prepared by a scammer or an idiot, and you better hope for a scammer because the power of idiots is overwhelming. Another Famous case is the homeo pathic teething drops that cause seizures— Yes, and absurd sentence on the face of it.
- plagiarist 3y agoWow. They must have been using a potent toxin for homeopathy to cause anything at all.
- shkkmo 3y agoThey were diluting a poisonous plant and had poor controls and processes that lead to inconsistent levels of dilution. > In investigating Hyland’s teething products, the FDA focused on an ingredient known as atropa belladonna, an herb known colloquially as “deadly nightshade.” > In diluted form, the substance is not expected to pose any health risk. In 2010, however, FDA inspectors who examined Hyland’s facilities criticized the company for substandard manufacturing practices and found inconsistent levels of atropa belladonna in its products. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hundreds-of-babies-harmed-by-homeopathic-remedies-families-say/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hundreds-of-babie...
- KennyBlanken 3y agoI'll take "foreseeable consequences of not prohibiting companies from adding to food anything that would be poisonous, regardless of concentration" for $500, Alex. And before someone gets all comic-book-guy on me: yeah, I'm aware things like iron are safe, and we "enrich" a lot of foods to help public health. Such enrichment should also be subject to strict regulation.
- MarcoZavala 3y ago[dead]
- willcipriano 3y agoJust give your kids regular water, don't subject them to your mental illness.
- perihelions 3y agoThis was stocked on Whole Foods shelves. I imagine many people who bought likely thought this was some kind of "regular" water. - "A study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in November 2021 laid out 25 cases of acute liver failure linked to the water—22 in Nevada and three in California, all of which occurred at the end of 2020. Specifically, the cases were linked to Real Water's 5-gallon Re2al Water product, sold in multiple southwestern states in places like Whole Foods."
- willcipriano 3y agoWhole Foods customers are probably buying that water because its "more healthy" than water from Walmart if we are honest.
- ta988 3y agoThat's what they believe. Same for a lot of things sold there. That's what happens in everything that has no controls. Food items, dietary supplements all of those have close to 0 controls, nobody checks what's in them. And it is the same (or worse) in all the kratom and synthetic thc products found everywhere in grocery stores and gas stations around the country. The agencies supposed to check for that are not doing anything for various reasons (they get dismantled, rendered inefficient through bureaucracy or plainy incompetent). This should tell you how much politics (both sides) really value the human lifes they make you believe they defend.
- plagiarist 3y agoSorry, I'm familiar with the actions taken by one side to defund and obstruct regulatory bodies, what is the other side doing that warrants a "both sides?" Being incompetent due to obstruction and a lack of funds?
- Octabrain 3y agoIt simply blows my mind the lack of common sense on the processing of something so well known and common as bottled water. I don't know how someone can be this stupid (or evil).
- krisoft 3y ago> It simply blows my mind the lack of common sense on the processing of something so well known and common as bottled water. I tell you one better. Coca Cola was selling filtered and bottled tap water in the UK. During filtering they somehow managed to contaminate it with bromate a substance linked with an increased cancer risk - in excess of UK legal standards. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/mar/19/foodanddrink https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/mar/19/foodanddrink
- bobsmooth 3y agoThe bromate was used in the filtration process and did not pose a health hazard, but the levels were above the limit.
- krisoft 3y ago> The bromate was used in the filtration process I don’t think that is accurate. It makes it sound like they were filtering the water through or with bromate, but my understanding is that it is a unwanted side-product generated by ozon treatment.
- creer 3y agoNot chemical FROM rocket fuel but "also used in rocket fuel". The fine article describes in some detail how it may have gotten in there. "May" only as apparently the expert only spent so much time on the mad scientist machinery the company was using. Amazing story.
- malfist 3y agoHydrazine isn't just a chemical FROM rocket fuel, it is rocket fuel itself. On of the most common monopropellants used in RCS thrusters
- perihelions 3y agoOn that tangent, there's been a large amount of R&D into finding alternative monopropellants, because this one's so infamously hazardous to work with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Propellant_Infusion_Mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Propellant_Infusion_Miss... - "When compared to the present high-thrust and high-performance industry standard for orbital maneuvering systems, which for decades, have exclusively been reliant upon toxic hydrazine based propellant formulations, the "greener" hydroxylammonium nitrate (HAN) monopropellant offers many advantages..." And: Starlink eschews chemical thrusters entirely, and only flies with electric Hall-effect thrusters (harmless krypton or argon gas). Might be an underappreciated engineering choice: no hazmats at integration should simplify a lot of things for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Satellite_hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Satellite_hardware
- heavenlyblue 3y agoOnly simplifies things for them because there's regulation around these materials
- wizzwizz4 3y agoYes, and? There is regulation around these materials. That's what regulation is for: to make amoral corporations cause less collateral damage. (Decent regulation can even, I hear, allow moral corporations to not be competed out of existence.)
- fortran77 3y agoThey would have been better off and more profitable if they just resold sold tap water as-is! The customers would never know, and they'd still be alive. The most important takeaway from the article was that this product was sold in Jeff Bezos' "Whole Foods". A good reason to never shop there.
- every 3y agoAlso known as "Whole Paycheck"...
- GordonS 3y ago> They would have been better off and more profitable if they just resold sold tap water as-is! Coco Cola legit used to do this in the UK, not sure if they still do.
- qingcharles 3y agoThey still do it in the rest of the world, but they never returned with it to the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani#United_Kingdom
- gnatman 3y ago> [Kemp] said that the person who developed the water treatment process for Real Water bought the titanium tubes "from some Russian guy in the 80s" and spent four to five months making alkaline waters in his garage, working until he had a formula that didn't make him vomit or have diarrhea. Ha… wow.
- ahoka 3y agoI think this is called the pseudoscientific rigor.
- logosmonkey 3y agoI love that some influencers who were marketing alkaline water would gush over how much they loved it with a wedge of lime or lemon squeezed into it.
- dtgriscom 3y agoThat title looked like click-bait to me, with "chemical from rocket fuel" being deliberately scary. Rocket fuel can have very ordinary (and even non-toxic) ingredients. But then I read it was hydrazine. Whoa: that's bad, and justifies the title. (Moral: always read the article.)
- mortenjorck 3y agoThe first place my mind went was “yoga mat chemical,” where a GRAS food-grade additive used in Subway bread was also commonly used as as an industrial plasticizer, and this connection, when seized upon by some media-savvy activists, was enough to get Subway to discontinue its use. But yeah, hydrazine is not that.
- perihelions 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azodicarbonamide?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azodicarbonamide?useskin=vecto...
- KennyBlanken 3y agoFrom reading that, my impression is that there's fair evidence it id toxic to people from the occupational health hazards that have been identified, and if it's toxic to workers, it shouldn't be in food. Sounds like in the US the manufactured food industry got away with using it by not doing much or any testing/research on it. With no pressure from regulators and no additional research, public opinion was all that was left. Frankly, "I don't want an industrial plasticizer in my bread" is pretty reasonable.
- mindslight 3y agoIt's almost like we'd be better off if the headline simply said "hydrazine".
- the__alchemist 3y agoSame reaction. I froze for a minute and said out loud "wow, hydrazine" after realizing preconceptions led me astray.
- denton-scratch 3y ago> This allegedly created positively charged and negatively charged solutions. This sounds like an "interesting" usage of the term "charged". In general, the process they developed sounds like total, antiscientific BS. And advertising the product as "Real Water", when it's deliberately made alkaline, is false advertising; real water is Ph-neutral.
- wolf550e 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine Hydrazine is the reason for the full hazmat suits and chemical sniffers used by personnel handling loading spacecraft propellant, handling landed spacecraft [1], and even the F-16's EPU [2]. 1 - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/X-37B_OTV4_landed_at_Kennedy_Space_Center_%28170507-O-FH989-001%29.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/X-37B_OT... 2 - https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jun/17/2002743830/1200/1200/0/210610-F-EZ112-0005.JPG https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jun/17/2002743830/1200/1200/0...
- ahoka 3y agoThe EPU is a generator that is used as an emergency backup if someone wondered. Fun fact, some mushrooms also contain hydrazine, including champignons. Proper heat treatment gets rid of it.
- kyleee 3y agoIs champignon a specific type of mushroom in english? I thought it was just the word for “mushroom” in french
- dboreham 3y agoIt's the French word for mushroom. However it seems some English speaking people (who sell mushrooms or food made with mushrooms) do call "regular mushrooms" by that name. Probably because it sounds cooler, or because they don't know any French.
- muki 3y agoGrandparent might be referring to Agaricus bisporus [0]. At least in my and some of the neighboring countries' languages we refer to these as <local transliteration of champignons>. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agaricus_bisporus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agaricus_bisporus
- ilkke 3y ago
- greybox 3y agoDoes anyone know where the "Alkalized Water" fad came from? I honestly don't get it
- ChoGGi 3y agoGoogle is saying it's used for weight loss via the high ph levels.
- kevinmchugh 3y agoThe alkaline food trend comes at least in part from a quack who called himself "Dr. Sebi".
- blincoln 3y agoAround 2011-2014, a coworker told me about a fellow online who was claiming that he'd solved all the world's health problems by narrowing the cause down to peoples' bodies having an acidic pH level instead of alkaline. The history of alkaline water pseudoscience goes back much farther,[1] but that was the earliest I heard of it in 21st century America. There was a list of "alkaline" vs. "acidic" foods, etc. It was very much in the same vein as the "aspartame is POISON!!!" chain emails of the 1990s, so I was disappointed when I started to see products on store shelves catering to the belief. I'm not seeing any obvious hits for the original source now, unfortunately. Maybe someone else has traced its modern incarnation back even further. [1] https://ua.pressbooks.pub/pseudoscienceessays/chapter/the-alkaline-water-myth/ https://ua.pressbooks.pub/pseudoscienceessays/chapter/the-al...
- m3kw9 3y agoWould be perfect advertising to call it Rocket fueled water
- SoftTalker 3y agoWow amazing. I tried a few bottles of "alkaline water" a few years ago when it caught my eye. Assumed it was just water with a bit of KOH or NaOH to bump up the pH a bit. Feel bad for the parents of these kids. When my first child was born, we lived in an area that had high natural Radon levels in the municipal water. High enough that the city had "may cause cancer" warnings on the water bills. We had water delivered in 5-gallon jugs for drinking, but it was regular bottled water, not anything that made any snake-oil type of claims. Not that I ever had it independently tested -- you just assume that mainstream food products like that are safe.