5 ms·

"Tap water is perfectly fine" people threw a lot of shade at people who only drink bottled water, but both should be using Reverse Osmosis filtration right now.

"Tap water is perfectly fine" people threw a lot of shade at people who only drink bottled water, but both should be using Reverse Osmosis filtration right now. Think of it as verifying the response you got from the API is correct...

wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
Yeah the plastic bottles are also not great: https://time.com/6553165/microplastics-in-bottled-water-study/ https://time.com/6553165/microplastics-in-bottled-water-stud... Just sad we made such a mess.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  There'll be no technology solution for this that scales globally for any means and usability
  - _factor 3y ago
    How about glass bottles and reusing them like we used to.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      Probably higher skill and cost throughout the full integration that there's no business/market incentive toward it and we can't rely on the state to check and curb every business toward radical ecological change It's easy to dream up rules and government mandates or budget items, which would be more directly interesting if we lived in an actual democracy (no matter what country on earth today) but rather we have to understand why state and business as we've enabled them to operate structurally would ever work toward those directives, and not just to an appeasingly greenwashed extent. And then think what other tools are available to us besides voting and waiting, given all that. Don't we all know devops here? Where's the structural analysis and systemically-impacting follow-up discussion? Instead people talk about the quality of individual masters and operators
  - wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
    Haha I guess we’re in luck. There is a global water distribution system in place for free :). All we have to do is stop allowing industries to dump in our most important natural resource. How stupid can we be?
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      "Stop allowing" says a lot. An authority that dictates and enforces it? Sounds like something that loves to use its power to collude with business in every country with this society
whyenot 3y ago
It really does depend on what your water source is and the pipes from there to your tap. For example, the Hetch Hetchy water that supplies San Francisco and some other parts of the Bay Area is very pure. Reverse osmosis is not going to remove much of anything. Davis water, or San Jose water, well, that's a little different. The other thing about RO water systems is that they are not very efficient. For every gallon of pure(-ish) water that a home system generates, it typically has to throw away 5 gallons of salty water.
- cheald 3y ago
  RO systems vary by efficiency, but 1:5 seems way out of whack. My tankless system claims 2:1 output:waste, and while I haven't measured it directly, I'd say that's probably pretty close to right.
  - whyenot 3y ago
    "For example, a typical point-of-use RO system will generate five gallons or more of reject water for every gallon of permeate produced." https://www.epa.gov/watersense/point-use-reverse-osmosis-systems https://www.epa.gov/watersense/point-use-reverse-osmosis-sys...
    - reducesuffering 3y ago
      This is outdated as most of the mfgs have gotten better at it. Mine is 1:1 drinking:waste and my monthly water consumption is barely affected as it's indiscernible in the noisy variation. First 4 links on Amazon I'm seeing 2:1, 2:1, 3:1, 3:1
    - jon_richards 3y ago
      I looked into this a while ago and didn't understand why the efficiency claims were so different, but here's a video of a RO system running https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r_T7Bgi3hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r_T7Bgi3hQ
- reducesuffering 3y ago
perryh2 3y ago
I've been using the Waterdrop G3 system in my kitchen and it's been great. https://www.amazon.com/Waterdrop-Reverse-Filtration-Reduction-Tankless/dp/B07P1XFYJP/ https://www.amazon.com/Waterdrop-Reverse-Filtration-Reductio...
ch4s3 3y ago
That RO water needs to have at least some minerals added back to it, unless you're pretty confident about your calcium and magnesium intake.
- dham 3y ago
  If you're taking Vitamin D and Vitamin K like you're supposed to, these are the last things you have to worry about.
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  The papers I've read generally indicate the average drinking water consumption is roughly only about 4%-10% RDA calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Most people should already be supplementing magnesium anyway since it's deficient in half of developed countries populations.
swatcoder 3y ago
It's all just kind of f'd anyway. The biological need for "water" is tuned to expect "water" to involve all sorts of trace minerals and compounds, some desired and some undesired, as well as some kind of stream of gut flora contributors and immune system challenges. Thinking of RO and other forms of heavily or industrially purified H20 as the same thing is a technologist's mistaken idealization, and to a cynical eye reads a lot more like ancient Hellenic ideas about simple essential fluids than anything either scientific or sustainable. It may be a necessary compromise because of modern contamination or because modern demand forces us to rely on increasingly worse supplies, but it's a long way from "verifying the response". It's more like an ugly last resort hack.
- JohnMakin 3y ago
  Go drink unfiltered water out of a wilderness stream after a melt and tell me how it goes
  - scottyah 3y ago
    I've done it a few times, never got sick. I've known people to not be so lucky, but that's pretty rare. Sure does "taste" good, but I'm not sure how much of that is circumstance based.
    - JohnMakin 3y ago
      Sorry I was not meaning to be as snarky as that came off. I’m an avid backpacker and have been in situations where I had to drink unfiltered stream water - while I know it’s possible to do so and not suffer ill effects, there are also a ton of super bad effects, and our bodies are far removed from the environment we evolved in 100k+ years ago. I don’t know the research on this but I’d wager our gut biome is much different than it was a million years ago as well.
- newZWhoDis 3y ago
  Compete and utter nonsense. You’d need 100+ gal/day to get the trace mineral content of a multi vitamin. The rest is equally preposterous.

wouldbecouldbe 3y ago

Yeah the plastic bottles are also not great: https://time.com/6553165/microplastics-in-bottled-water-study/ https://time.com/6553165/microplastics-in-bottled-water-stud... Just sad we made such a mess.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
There'll be no technology solution for this that scales globally for any means and usability
- _factor 3y ago
  How about glass bottles and reusing them like we used to.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Probably higher skill and cost throughout the full integration that there's no business/market incentive toward it and we can't rely on the state to check and curb every business toward radical ecological change It's easy to dream up rules and government mandates or budget items, which would be more directly interesting if we lived in an actual democracy (no matter what country on earth today) but rather we have to understand why state and business as we've enabled them to operate structurally would ever work toward those directives, and not just to an appeasingly greenwashed extent. And then think what other tools are available to us besides voting and waiting, given all that. Don't we all know devops here? Where's the structural analysis and systemically-impacting follow-up discussion? Instead people talk about the quality of individual masters and operators
- wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
  Haha I guess we’re in luck. There is a global water distribution system in place for free :). All we have to do is stop allowing industries to dump in our most important natural resource. How stupid can we be?
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    "Stop allowing" says a lot. An authority that dictates and enforces it? Sounds like something that loves to use its power to collude with business in every country with this society

whyenot 3y ago

It really does depend on what your water source is and the pipes from there to your tap. For example, the Hetch Hetchy water that supplies San Francisco and some other parts of the Bay Area is very pure. Reverse osmosis is not going to remove much of anything. Davis water, or San Jose water, well, that's a little different. The other thing about RO water systems is that they are not very efficient. For every gallon of pure(-ish) water that a home system generates, it typically has to throw away 5 gallons of salty water.

cheald 3y ago
RO systems vary by efficiency, but 1:5 seems way out of whack. My tankless system claims 2:1 output:waste, and while I haven't measured it directly, I'd say that's probably pretty close to right.
- whyenot 3y ago
  "For example, a typical point-of-use RO system will generate five gallons or more of reject water for every gallon of permeate produced." https://www.epa.gov/watersense/point-use-reverse-osmosis-systems https://www.epa.gov/watersense/point-use-reverse-osmosis-sys...
  - reducesuffering 3y ago
    This is outdated as most of the mfgs have gotten better at it. Mine is 1:1 drinking:waste and my monthly water consumption is barely affected as it's indiscernible in the noisy variation. First 4 links on Amazon I'm seeing 2:1, 2:1, 3:1, 3:1
  - jon_richards 3y ago
    I looked into this a while ago and didn't understand why the efficiency claims were so different, but here's a video of a RO system running https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r_T7Bgi3hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r_T7Bgi3hQ
reducesuffering 3y ago

perryh2 3y ago

I've been using the Waterdrop G3 system in my kitchen and it's been great. https://www.amazon.com/Waterdrop-Reverse-Filtration-Reduction-Tankless/dp/B07P1XFYJP/ https://www.amazon.com/Waterdrop-Reverse-Filtration-Reductio...

ch4s3 3y ago

That RO water needs to have at least some minerals added back to it, unless you're pretty confident about your calcium and magnesium intake.

dham 3y ago
If you're taking Vitamin D and Vitamin K like you're supposed to, these are the last things you have to worry about.
reducesuffering 3y ago
The papers I've read generally indicate the average drinking water consumption is roughly only about 4%-10% RDA calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Most people should already be supplementing magnesium anyway since it's deficient in half of developed countries populations.

swatcoder 3y ago

It's all just kind of f'd anyway. The biological need for "water" is tuned to expect "water" to involve all sorts of trace minerals and compounds, some desired and some undesired, as well as some kind of stream of gut flora contributors and immune system challenges. Thinking of RO and other forms of heavily or industrially purified H20 as the same thing is a technologist's mistaken idealization, and to a cynical eye reads a lot more like ancient Hellenic ideas about simple essential fluids than anything either scientific or sustainable. It may be a necessary compromise because of modern contamination or because modern demand forces us to rely on increasingly worse supplies, but it's a long way from "verifying the response". It's more like an ugly last resort hack.

JohnMakin 3y ago
Go drink unfiltered water out of a wilderness stream after a melt and tell me how it goes
- scottyah 3y ago
  I've done it a few times, never got sick. I've known people to not be so lucky, but that's pretty rare. Sure does "taste" good, but I'm not sure how much of that is circumstance based.
  - JohnMakin 3y ago
    Sorry I was not meaning to be as snarky as that came off. I’m an avid backpacker and have been in situations where I had to drink unfiltered stream water - while I know it’s possible to do so and not suffer ill effects, there are also a ton of super bad effects, and our bodies are far removed from the environment we evolved in 100k+ years ago. I don’t know the research on this but I’d wager our gut biome is much different than it was a million years ago as well.
newZWhoDis 3y ago
Compete and utter nonsense. You’d need 100+ gal/day to get the trace mineral content of a multi vitamin. The rest is equally preposterous.