Re: What is the best water to drink?

What is the best water to drink?

hard/soft
ph levels etc.
What are some different tests which can be done?

I myself will admit to drinking distilled, charcoal-filtered water for flavor reasons; the local water doesn't taste all that great. But it's perfectly safe to drink.

With that out of the way, I'll try to answer some of your other questions.

• There is no problem with drinking hard water; what gives it hardness is calcium salts, which are perfectly safe (and in fact required for healthy bones and teeth). Soft water is also safe, except that the calcium has been replaced by sodium, so if you're on a low-sodium diet you should not drink soft water.

• Most natural water sources will be at a reasonable pH, somewhere between 6 and 7.5. Certainly the water from your tap will be. You should not, of course, drink anything with a pH lower than 4.5 or 5 (vinegar has pH = 5), or higher than about 8 or 9; such liquids could damage your mouth, tongue, and esophagus.

  Vomitus comes from the stomach, and stomach acid has a pH of about 1. However, the vomitus itself (because of dilution) probably has a pH higher than 4. Even so, if you've ever had the stomach flu you know that your throat burns for a while after you throw up.

• I don't know the chemistry behind tests for hardness in water, and in fact there are likely to be quite a number of them. The easiest way for you personally to do it is to take a water sample to someone who sells water softeners. They have test kits on site.

• If you want to do the hardness test yourself, the most complete results can be obtained with an instrument called an Atomic Absorption Spectrometer. However, you can do the test more simply by just getting some testing materials from your local water softener dealer.

• Here's a nice brief discussion of water hardness.