Distilled Water vs. Purified Water: What’s The Difference?

We all know how important it is to drink sufficient amounts of water. However, it’s easy to forget that almost as important as the drinking of water is that the liquid is clean, and that its’ the right kind of water.

That’s right, there are different kinds of water. Two type of water that people have the most questions about are purified water and distilled water.

What Is Distilled Water?

Distilled water is a type of water that has been boiled, turned to steam, and has then condensed into liquid water in a different location from the original.

Impurities that do not boil are left behind, as are impurities below their boiling point (because they don’t become steam and get transferred with the steam to the cooling chamber). The vast majority of bacteria and viruses are destroyed by the heat. Note that this isn’t a perfect process — materials with a boiling point below that of water could be cared through to the distilled water. This is why distillation should be used with other types of purification.

Boiling water at home is one of the ways to purify it. Boiling water is the first step of distillation but boiling alone does not distill water! If we are responsible and aware of the importance of drinking 100% clean water, a reverse osmosis filter will give us the liquid we need.

Can You Drink Distilled Water?

Distilled water is not drinking water. Is is normally safe to drink in small quantities because the distillation process basically boils water making it mostly free it from its main contaminants, including bacteria, inorganic minerals, viruses, and metals. However, there are some types of pollutants, whose melting points are low so boiling the water is not guaranteed to remove them.

That is why it is of great importance to have additional purification technologies, such as reverse osmosis, which separates all those harmful elements present in the water and provides a quality liquid, clean and free of contaminants, odors, and flavors.

In addition to removing harmful contaminants from water, the distillation process removes useful minerals (like calcium), which is why distilled water is not drinking water.

What Is Purified Water?

Purified water is defined simply as water that has had its impurities removed. Purified water has the highest percentage of H2O possible and as little of everything else (basically impurities and contaminants) as can be. There is no text definition on what is “purified water” and what’s not, though in the US purified water needs to meet drinking water standards as set by the EPA.

Drinking water is always purified in some ways. As its name suggests, that water just needs to go through a purification process, usually at a public water system facility, which achieves the necessary quality standards for drinking water. The municipal water we drink in the United States has undergone a purification process to remove contaminants and make it safe for drinking.

For the liquid to be called “purified,” it must go through a series of processes in which a large part of inorganic compounds are eliminated. Among them we can make special mention of sodium and chlorine, however, through this procedure, it is possible that the elements that are essential for the proper functioning of our body are left behind.

Types of water purification, like nano-filtration and types of industrial-strength reverse osmosis filtration can demineralize water which results in a purified water that is not good for drinking but can have medical and scientific applications.

Filter Water vs. Purified Water: Are They They Same?

Filtering is a form of water purification but the two terms are not interchangeable. Purified water can be filtered but, on the whole, it’s held to a higher standard than filtering alone because filtering is a vast category which can include filtered that only improve the taste of water but leave behind potentially harmful chemicals.

Purified water must need EPA drinking water guidelines which is something that usually needs to be done by a professional purification process, not by filtering alone.