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| More likely than a third eye you will probably grow stones in gall bladder, kidneys, and/or bladder from the minerals in well water. I remember visiting my grandfather in a hospital and the other patient in the room had just had a gall stone removed. It was in the room and shining white like perfect limestone. He couldn't understand why it was limestone because all his life he'd drank only rain water from a cistern (made of limestone blocks I figured).
The freshest water is probably from a RO or water distiller providing they and their storage containers are really clean and made from materials not soluble in water, primarily glass, not plastics or metals. Water is the most versatile solvent and readily grabs plasticizers from plastic containers, especially water bottles. And even in a reusable water bottle, there will be plasticizers leaking into the water until the bottle gets really stiff. Older bottled water to me has the flavor of plastic. I can do without that.
All well water has minerals from the soil and rock of the territory the water leached through to get to the well or aquifer tapped by the well. That area could be a few hundred feet across or a few thousand square miles. It could have taken a few days or a few millenia for the water to reach that aquifer. Some stuff gets filtered by that pass but some stuff gets dissolved, like limestone, sulfur compounds, and iron ore.
To get everything out of suspect water takes multiple processes. Distilling is good at taking out minerals and compounds that boil at higher temperatures than water, but chemicals that boil at lower temperature than water tend to get a bit more concentrated in the distillate. Boiling water on the stove before putting it through the still helps, but puts those chemicals (like herbicides) into the air in the kitchen which may not be any better for the family health. RO traps compounds with molecules bigger than water, but passes those impurities (fortunately not very many farm chemicals have small molecules) with the cleaned water.
What we like for water to taste like depends on what water we grew up on. To city folks, water without a bit of chlorine but with a bit of limestone and iron ore tastes bad. To farm folks raised on well water,city water at best tastes bland or contaminated by chlorine. To farm folks raised on well water, well water from across the road from a different depth or down the road a mile tastes different.
Raised in a big city, when I moved to a farm house I drank from gallon jugs of grocery store distilled water rather than the well water which having passed through a water softener contained washing soda (sodium carbonate) in place of lime (calcium carbonate) plus iron the softener didn't quite get removed (shown by the rusty stains in the water appliances). Many a time I've been offered bottled water in individual bottles and it tasted like plastic. It gets that way from being around a long time. Now my acreage is supplied by a water company that distributes city water or water through its own RO plant, but if that water stays stagnant in their plastic pipes it picks up a plastic flavor. My farm shed is at the end of a line and I've used two gallons in the past year so I won't even think of drinking any there.
I'm sure dogs have a more sensitive sense of smell and taste and also think water should taste like the first water they were raised on though some could be intrigued by flavorful (though to us dirty) water.
Gerald J. | |
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what makes water fresh?
