Deionized water bad for you?

Guys just discovered a major issue after a couple months of use of cpap therapy. Due to a language barrrer i have been buying deionized water from the supermarket that they use in irons instead of distilled. Is this harmful for me? i hope i didnt do damage to my lungs over a stupid translation error. The only place i can find distilled water here is at a pharmacy.

Not a problem. DI water has had the metal and salt ions removed through a resin filter process, where as distilled water has impurities removed by maintaining the water at its "pure" boiling point, and then collecting the water vapor. The need for distilled water is to prevent mineral buildup in your humidifier and hose, so DI water meets that bill.

You did not damage your lungs......some folks here use straight tap water and that frequently has lots of minerals in it. Just be sure to clean your humidifier chamber frequently if you continue to use deionized or regular water. I buy my distilled at a pharmacy too. You drink regular water don't you, deionized is just that with some of the minerals removed, distilled is boiled and the steam condensed back into water, so all of the minerals are removed. Its up to you, you are not hurting yourself, like I said just be sure to clean your humidifier chamber more often.

No harm. Won't hurt a thing. Main reason for distilled suggestion is for tank appearance not for any medical reason.
Any minerals in the water are too heavy to be transmitted to the lungs via the humidified air and the minerals accumulate in the tank making it ugly. Not much stuff in water is tiny enough to hitch a ride on water vapor in humidified air to the lungs.
They are too large and too heavy for the moisture in the air to carry.
Ugly tank is just ugly and not really harmful. Easy to clean with a bit of vinegar if it gets too ugly. Vinegar will dissolve any minerals...just rinse well after using because vinegar smell lingers a bit and some find it stinky.

Deionized water is equivalent to distilled water, in that the mineral ions have been removed.
The process is faster and probably cheaper.
There is no scale, no heat, and no special equipment except a filter full of deionizing resin pellets.
It may not remove bacteria or viruses, since it is not necessarily intended for drinking.
I might consider running boiled, cooled tap water through a filter if distilled were unavailable.
I'm not sure how, or how often, one would sanitize the filter.

Deionized water is distilled water what is ion neutral. If you crank up a distillation device in your kitchen, you may take tap water which is mostly H2O with some other random chemicals like chlorine and fluoride compounds and evaporate mostly just the water. It turns out that sometimes the other compounds also evaporate at about 100 °C (212 °F near sea level) and go along for the ride. Depending on your tap water, some of them can be highly ionized. Deionized water removes (or neutralizes) those too.

Deionized or distilled water is fine. If you read the net, you may hear stories of people dying from drinking it. Those are mostly rumors but pure water doesn't have any salts you need so drinking only it while being on starvation diets can screw up your electrolytes which has made people sick. Drinking a couple of glasses of it a day won't be a problem and drinking any amount of it with food is fine but your body might just like some of the stuff that is in your tap water (unless its lead).

wow great fast reply from everyone. The only reason i started looking into it is cause my mask was very smelly like with moldy water smell and thought it was from my afternoon naps that could have made it but after cleaning my mask even after an afternoon mask i still had the smell, until i traced the source to my deionized water which stunk.

i clean my tank with soap weekly and dump the water every morning and at new at night but i guess the batch was bad or just bad quality deionized. As you guys said earlier its not free from bacteria so that got me worried.

The pharmacy also doesnt seem to understand the difference and almost gave me deionized water again. The only thing close to distilled water was water for injections that she gave me but at 5 euros a liter was way too expensive. i have to hunt down where to find some distilled water. i guess worse case worse i do some mad scientist action and use two pots with one boiling and catch the condensation in the other.

i was also considering using reverse osmosis water that i have at home dunno if its enough minerals removed thought. i have at at a ratio of 2 to 1 in the dump ratio.

Neither should be "moldy" unless they aren't telling the truth on the label.

You can distill water at home, it just uses lots of energy since you need to boil off lots of water. It also makes the house very humid.

Get a tea kettle or something you can put on the stove where the steam goes some place controllable. Put in the water and let the steam hit something where it will hit and cool down (maybe a large metal pan?) and then run down to something where you can collect it. If you're doing this with random kitchen ware, you'll need to start with liter (quart) or two of water. Remember steam does burn and nearly boiling water tends to stay too hot to handle. Don't put it in anything plastic until it cools which can take hours.

My resmed s9 holds maybe 500 ml or about a 1/2 quart. I figure I would need to start with about 4 liters (one gal) of water to get enough to do this on my stove with the pans I've got.

-tim wrote:You can distill water at home, it just uses lots of energy since you need to boil off lots of water. Remember steam does burn and nearly boiling water tends to stay too hot to handle. Don't put it in anything plastic until it cools which can take hours.

Alot of energy and alot of seriously wasted time.

+1, water in the liquid phase has a finite upper temp, water in the vapor phase does not.

jtmarten wrote:

-tim wrote:You can distill water at home, it just uses lots of energy since you need to boil off lots of water. Remember steam does burn and nearly boiling water tends to stay too hot to handle. Don't put it in anything plastic until it cools which can take hours.

Alot of energy and alot of seriously wasted time.

+1, water in the liquid phase has a finite upper temp, water in the vapor phase does not.

It cost me $4 a liter to buy distilled water here since the closest wal-mart is somewhere near Guam.

Deionized water from a grocery store shouldn't be harmful in a CPAP, even if it's not as good as distilled.

-tim wrote:Deionized water is distilled water what is ion neutral.

That's not right. Distilled water is produced by turning water from liquid to steam and condensing it back again. Deionized water is usually a filtering or chemical treatment process that removes ionizing chemicals, especially salts and minerals. It does not produce water as pure as distilling. In particular, it does not remove non-ionic contaminants or germs.

"Deionized" water is often used as a cheaper substitute for distilled water.

Sometimes deionized water is made for industrial processes and may not be safe to drink because the process removes ionizing chemicals, but doesn't necessarily remove other harmful chemicals. It might even add some non-ionizing chemicals to the water. I wouldn't bring home industrial deionized water from your job at the chemical plant.

I would expect any deionized water sold in grocery stores would be suitable for drinking and would be better than tap water for humidifier use, even if it's not quite as good as distilled water.

There are some home "deionization" filters intended strictly for steam irons that might not be suitable for drinking or CPAP use.

By the way, ResMed says it's OK to use tap water as long as you use the tank that can be opened and cleaned. You need to empty the tank out every day and clean and replace it more often.

archangle wrote:Deionized water from a grocery store shouldn't be harmful in a CPAP, even if it's not as good as distilled.

-tim wrote:Deionized water is distilled water what is ion neutral.

That's not right. Distilled water is produced by turning water from liquid to steam and condensing it back again. Deionized water is usually a filtering or chemical treatment process that removes ionizing chemicals, especially salts and minerals. It does not produce water as pure as distilling. In particular, it does not remove non-ionic contaminants or germs.

"Deionized" water is often used as a cheaper substitute for distilled water.

Sometimes deionized water is made for industrial processes and may not be safe to drink because the process removes ionizing chemicals, but doesn't necessarily remove other harmful chemicals. It might even add some non-ionizing chemicals to the water. I wouldn't bring home industrial deionized water from your job at the chemical plant.

I would expect any deionized water sold in grocery stores would be suitable for drinking and would be better than tap water for humidifier use, even if it's not quite as good as distilled water.

There are some home "deionization" filters intended strictly for steam irons that might not be suitable for drinking or CPAP use.

Technically distilled water would go through a still (as in whisky still) but in the US you can sell reverse osmosis water as "distilled water". "deionized water" must be pre-processed by either reverse osmosis or distillation. That is based on my knowledge of USDA specs from 20 years ago so things may have changed.

As far as CPAP goes, the most important thing is to not to have any live bacteria in it. Even just boiling it fixes that.

DI (deionized) water is prepared by running water through an ion exchange system (IX), sometimes called DI beds. DI is usually high in sodium, which 'exchanges' with the other metals (minerals) like calcium and zinc.

Stilatos wrote:Guys just discovered a major issue after a couple months of use of cpap therapy. Due to a language barrrer i have been buying deionized water from the supermarket that they use in irons instead of distilled. Is this harmful for me? i hope i didnt do damage to my lungs over a stupid translation error. The only place i can find distilled water here is at a pharmacy.

I gave up looking to buy steam distilled water and bought an air still instead from a company in Queensland. Initial outlay was around AUD200. Richard