Distilled vs. Purified Water

I recently went to get distilled water at the grocery, but they were out, and I was forced to get purified water instead. I since have noticed a smell when I put on my nasal pillows, and wonder if it's the water or if I just need to do a thorough cleaning.

Anyone know the difference between 'distilled' and 'purified' water, as it relates to CPAP humidifiers?

thanks.....

Distilled water is distilled water, 2 atoms of H, bonded to 1 atom of O, purified is whatever the guy with the plastic bottle, puts in his bottle, and you can be sure it has more than just 2 atoms of H, bonded to 1 atom of O, in it. Jim

so... you're saying I should not be using purified water? (The label said 'replacement for any distilled water use', or something like that)

Taken from a Google search "difference between purified water and distilled water"

Distilled water is water that has been recondensed from steam. Water is heated to boiling and the water vapor (steam) is collected and condensed back into a pure liquid. Any impurities like minerals, stay as a residue in the original liquid, separate from the distilled water. Distilled is probably considered the most pure.

Bottled water is tougher because it takes many forms: spring, purified, and mineral are the most common but there is also sparkling, artesian, etc. Spring water, like Evian, comes from groundwater that rises to the surface naturally. The composition of this water is not allowed to be changed before it is bottled. Mineral water is water naturally containing not less than 250 parts per million total dissolved solids. Note: a lot of people think Dasani is mineral water but it isn't. Dasani is purified water that has had minerals added back. Purified water is basically tap water that has gone through additional treatment processes like filtration, reverse osmosis and/or ozonation to remove more impurities and make the water taste better. It is almost always more pure than your tap water.

So yeah, purified water is as much a marketing term as it is a descriptor.

ALWAYS go with distilled water just to be sure. It's not AS big a deal with CPAP as it is with, say, oxygen where you have smaller inlets and outlets, but it is still important.

Bingo

Thank you.

it may be RO water(Reverse Osmosis) which is what I use, more pure(not that it is any better than using Distilled water), but with me allready having a ro water machine it is cheeper than buying distilled.

Brian

Yes, I think it is RO. That would be Okay to use? I wonder where the smell came from... a bit like a swamp, in spite of regular cleaning and rarely using any tap water.

I too recently noticed a moldy, swampy smell coming thru the mask from my resevoir. I got to checking the gallon jug of water, and it was a new type my store had started carrying. It said "bottled from municipal drinking water". It also had a heavy chlorine smell. So, evidently, they bottled it straight out of the tap!!!!!

So, just because it's in a bottle doesn't mean it's pure.

Drinking water is usually simply water appropriate for drinking.

It can be anything - and I buy it because I have a well that I have not spent the hundreds to test - it is double carbon filtered and looks great, does a fine job on the wash and showering and I even cook with it but I'm just a bit nervous. So the dog and birds get that cheap drinking water.

Distilled and Reverse Osmosis both (these days) use carbon filtration to remove the stuff that will pass the filter - or the aromatics that will boil with the water and condense with it.

The heavy stuff, the salts - that crud will stay behind in the boiling, or be resisted by the membrane. But the membrane - or the boiling and recondensing, won't stop everything.

If you know what you are trying to lose. like if you have salt water from the ocean and you are trying to make it fresh, then distillation - or RO - that sort of thing works real well. If you have gotten pesticides in the water, well, they might penitrate the RO membrane or pass in the boil/recondense.

All that said, there are RO systems that will take rotten smelling well water and purify it to the point where it can be used in, well, for example, kidney dialysis. The right filters - of all sorts, get almost everything out of the water. If it is a high end filter, it will make pure water, with a RO stage or a distiller stage and a good carbon filter stage, and the water can be used for purposes far beyond what we need in terms of purity for our humidifiers..

I switched from ro to distilled for peace of mind (not sure if that helped), and thoroughly cleaned out my tube and reservoir with vinegar and water. Also ran res. through dishwasher. Smell is gone.

According to the FDA this is their defintion of purified water:

"Water that is produced by distillation, deionization, reverse osmosis or other suitable processes and that meets the definition of "purified water" in the U.S. Pharmacopeia, 23d Revision, Jan. 1, 1995. As appropriate, also may be called "demineralized water," "deionized water," "distilled water," and "reverse osmosis water."

So, according to this, the FDA says distilled water is a type of purified water. Doesn't that clear everything up? Maybe, unless you read the label on the bottle and it says, "meets FDA requirement for USP standard definition of purifed or distlled water" how does anyone really know?

Bottom line, maybe I will purchase a home water distilling apparatus and now devote one room of the house to the APAP, CPAP, used and current masks, chin straps, old tubes, etc. and charge admission. Imagine all this after one month of experimentation. I can hardly wait until I gather more which is sure to happen, but I digress.

And if you are ever really worried about it, or just want to go all out and never worry about it again -

Check with your equipment provider. They should be able to provide you with Sterile Water. It's a couple bucks a liter. Not horribly expensive, but not dirt cheap either.

However, it WILL remove all questions from the equation!

Bingo

While Distilled water is Purified water, Purified Water isn't Distilled water, unless the label says it's Distilled water.

A nickel is money, a quarter is money, but they aren't the same nor do they have the same value.
Jim

Sterile Water does not mean it doesn't have minerals or other solids in it, it means the bugs are dead, by poison or boiling or maybe they shot them.

My wife is the supervisor of a medical laboratory with many sensitive analysis machines that require constant cleaning, rinsing, etc. There are miles of fine tubing, little pots, and chambers... some heat up, some retain fluids, and so on. (Can you tell I have little idea what she does or how she does it? That's OK, she doesn't know much about CPAP so we're even.)

Her advice is similar to that listed above: "purified water" is a relative term depending on its market -- for drinking it means it shouldn't have many "growies" but could include chlorine and background salts and minerals that are fine for consumption by humans (maybe not some plants or fish) but its way too "dirty" for lab machinery (a little chlorine in a sensitive test might affect results in addition to mineral buildup clogging tubing or valves).

Likewise, "distilled water" is relative. That sold off of grocery or drug store shelves may be fine for humidifiers, swamp coolers, irons, etc. but it may still carry small amounts of stuff that is inappropriate for medical machinery. Some vapor stills can produce pretty pure water but generally not in mass market quantities.

Ro water also comes in a variety of quality levels depending on expected use but is generally a little "purer" than most vapor distilled water in terms of minerals. It’s also tougher to find and can be more expensive.

Her advice on CPAP humidifiers is that given that is just a container of heated water and that vapor is the only portion being consumed (your own distiller), the concern is mainly reducing mineral buildup. So, distilled (vapor or Ro) water off the shelf is probably fine with periodic checking and cleaning with a mild acid (vinegar - diluted if the plastic is soft to prevent scoring the tank walls or removing galvanizing or coating on the metal bottom). If the water is cloudy at the bottom of the tank or you see scaling, clean it. If that happens in a week, change sources or brands.

Because of the volume that goes though the unit (at least in my case) she said she would stay away from tap or bottled drinking water. She also feels (with no evidence) that avoiding breathing minute quantities freed chlorine vapor each night for years is a good idea.

Sorry for the length of this post.

The best on the subject I have read so far. Thanks Snoozing G....

David