What Is Pure Water?

Water is the most common substance occurring in human organism. It comprises 60 – 70% of the weight of adult and 75 - 85% of the weight of a suckling. Water fulfils a lot of functions in the organism; the most important of them are those of digestion, absorption of nutrients, blood circulation, transport of nutrients through cell membranes and perspiration.

Daily demand of water (food and water intake) in common temperature conditions is about 2 - 2.5 litres. There has been wrong assumption for many years that drinking water has to contain mineral salts. Why is it wrong? Water can contain dissolved chemical substances, amount of which depends on the time and place of origin of the water. Content of salts is higher in waters coming from easily dissolvable rocks (e.g. calcite) and very low in those coming from not easily dissolvable rock (e.g. granite). The amount of salt increases also according to the age of water. Mineral waters are in depth under the Earth surface for millions of years; e.g. Oligocene waters are about 30 - 35 million of years old. On the other hand, surface waters, from which we usually draw water for drinking, are the youngest and can contain only minute amount of salts. Content and type of those minerals are diverse, depending on the place of origin of the water. 

 It is necessary to add that those trace amounts of minerals in surface waters are almost lost among number of new compounds "donated" by our civilisation. Compounds, which we have never known before, penetrate into surface water in form of domestic, industrial or agricultural waste. They are predominantly nitrates, organic substances, herbicides and pesticides. Those carcinogens pollute significant number of our surface waters. Often they are real sewers, unsuitable even for bathing. And they contain also huge amounts of so called "death metals", such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium etc., which often occur in our waters in form of salts that no one dares to call minerals. 

 Waterworks, working with technologies decades of years old, are not able to eliminate chemical pollution of water. Innocuous mineral salts get into water system along with many toxic substances.

 Why do we discuss problem of mineral salts in drinking water? Among wide range of home and industrial water filters there are only two types being able to eliminate almost all of the invisible chemicals dissolvable in water. They are well-known distillation equipment or new, revolutionary technologies based on the principle of reverse osmosis (RO). It is impossible, however, to eliminate all the unwanted substances without eliminating of mineral salts, which are suitable for consumption. 

 Drinking water has never been the provider of minerals (calcium, magnesium or potassium) that are essential for life functions of human organism, as well as it is not source of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins etc. Analyses of our surface waters or water-system waters show that content of mineral salts is very low in comparison to daily demand of human being. That is tenfold higher than possible intake from drinking water.Moreover, our body cannot utilise lots of inorganic minerals from water. It seems that almost whole amount of needed mineral substances we must take in organic form from food. 

 Mineral constitution of water differs from one place on the Earth to another. It is fact that people, who drink mostly very hard water containing calcium, are statistically at risk of cardiovascular diseases. On the other hand, we know about examples of people, who drink only pure, mineral-free water from melted icebergs - average life span of Eskimos or tribes living under Pamirs are more than 100 years. Their health and long life are the best evidences of the unimportance of mineral salts in water we commonly drink.