From my previous article, “How clean is your water at work”, I was asked, “What is considered unsafe and undrinkable water?”. I actually had no clue as to what levels in ppm was considered unsafe. And thus I began my search.
 
After 15 minutes of fruitless searching, I finally came across a site that held the answer. Where did I look you ask? Well, I went to the site of my trustee water tester HDM Digital and they supplied me with the information I was looking for.

As you can see the ideal drinking water range is 0-50 ppm. 50-200 ppm is considered safe, 200-300 is considered marginally acceptable, 300-500 is considered still drinkable, but is labeled as High TDS. Average tap water is in the 170-400 range, but I don’t think I would drink anything above 300, and anything above 500 is considered unsafe. How can water with high TDS be undesirable or harmful you ask? Well let me tell you.

It may taste bitter, salty, or metallic and may have unpleasant odors
High TDS water is less thirst quenching.
High TDS interferes with the taste of foods and beverages, and makes them less desirable to consume.
Some of the individual mineral salts that make up TDS pose a variety of health hazards. The most problematic are Nitrates, Sodium, Sulfates, Barium, Cadmium, Copper, and Fluoride.
If a person drinks 2 pints of water a day, this will total 4500 gallons of water passing through his body over a 70 year span. If the water is not totally pure, this 4500 gallons will include 200-300 pounds of rock that the body cannot utilize. Most will be eliminated through excretory channels. But some of this will stay in the body, causing stiffness in the joints, hardening of the arteries, kidney stones, gall stones and blockages of arteries, microscopic capillaries and other passages in which liquids flow through our entire body.

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The other day at work, my group and I took our usually stroll down to the water cooler area.  Some of us got water from the filtered water area, and some of us got hotwater, for their tea, from the hot water/coffee maker machine. And that’s when it hit me and I wondered to myself “Hmmm, How clean is this water?”. 

The following day, I brought my trusty HM Digital TDS Tester (i.e. water tester), ideal for all water purification applications, wastewater regulation, aquaculture, hydroponics, and colloidal silver.  So, again, as my group and I took our usually stroll down to the water cooler, I took out my water tester and began testing away.

The first test was the filtered water area. The test result was a whopping 5 parts per million (ppm).  For those of you that do not know that is some pretty clean water. I feel pretty good about our company’s water filtering system. 

The second test was the tap water, which equalled 285 ppm. WTH? Such a huge difference between the tap and the filtered water. Mental note to self drink the filtered water.

 The third test was the hot water dispenser located on the coffee maker. The result equalled 10 ppm. Whoa, not bad at all, not quite as good as the filtered water area but still pretty good.

The fourth test was the drinking fountain located just outside the elevator area.  The result was a shocking 220 ppm.  Apparantly drinking fountains are unfiltered and is pretty much similar to tap water, either that or the filter on the drinking fountain hasn’t been changed in a long time.

 So let’s recap.

Mental note to self: Don’t drink the tap water.

Next to come: The work Ice Dispenser and bottled water test.

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