Alkaline 'Real Water' Linked To Liver Failure In Kids -- And Reports Are Rising (arstechnica.com) 142
couchslug shares a report from Ars Technica: At least five infants and children in Nevada have suffered acute non-viral hepatitis, resulting in liver failure, after drinking "alkalized" water by the brand "Real Water," local and federal regulators reported this week. At least six others fell ill with less severe conditions after drinking the water -- and additional reports continue to surface.
The initial five infants and children with liver failure fell ill in November 2020 and required hospitalization, but they have since recovered. They lived in four different households in southern Nevada. The other six ill people -- three adults and three children -- came from at least two of those same households and reported vomiting, nausea, loss of appetite, and fatigue, according to the Southern Nevada Health District. The health district is working to investigate the cases with the Food and Drug Administration. It's not yet clear what caused the illnesses but "to date, the consumption of 'Real Water' brand alkaline water was found to be the only common link identified between all the cases," the health district said." The FDA advises against drinking, cooking, selling, or serving "Real Water" alkaline water until more information is known. Real Water is asking that all retailers pull the product from the shelf immediately.
"Real Water claims that its water -- which is sold throughout the Southwest -- is infused with negative ions and has a pH of 9.0," reports Ars Technica. "The company makes vague references to unproven health benefits and suggests drinking the water leads to 'increased cellular hydration.' There are no established benefits to alkaline diets and water, and the human body maintains its own healthy pH." Two lawsuits have already been filed against the company.
The initial five infants and children with liver failure fell ill in November 2020 and required hospitalization, but they have since recovered. They lived in four different households in southern Nevada. The other six ill people -- three adults and three children -- came from at least two of those same households and reported vomiting, nausea, loss of appetite, and fatigue, according to the Southern Nevada Health District. The health district is working to investigate the cases with the Food and Drug Administration. It's not yet clear what caused the illnesses but "to date, the consumption of 'Real Water' brand alkaline water was found to be the only common link identified between all the cases," the health district said." The FDA advises against drinking, cooking, selling, or serving "Real Water" alkaline water until more information is known. Real Water is asking that all retailers pull the product from the shelf immediately.
"Real Water claims that its water -- which is sold throughout the Southwest -- is infused with negative ions and has a pH of 9.0," reports Ars Technica. "The company makes vague references to unproven health benefits and suggests drinking the water leads to 'increased cellular hydration.' There are no established benefits to alkaline diets and water, and the human body maintains its own healthy pH." Two lawsuits have already been filed against the company.
alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:5, Interesting)
All the good stuff is acidic rather than alkaline. Black coffee is as far from neutral as this branded drink but in the opposite direction on the pH Scale.
Almost as far over again is another drink, orange juice, then you have condiments and cooking ingredients - even the basic ones like vinegar and lemon juice are indisputably acidic.
Whereas alkalines include things like soap and bleach. Drink acids, not alkalines.
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Show me a fish that likes alkaline water.
Guppies like slightly alkaline pH (7-8). [guppyexpert.com]
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Ok, the scary revelation from that link isn't about guppies at all. It's that they think pH 8.5 is normal for tap water.
Which led me to discover that UK and EU regulations allow pH levels between 6.5 and 9.5 for tap water!
That suggests that it's not the pH causing the issues in the US, or the parts of the EU with higher pH levels than that would be killing entire populations.
(Happily my local tap water is pH 7.11, which is close enough to neutral to offset the coffee I keep making)
Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:5, Informative)
> Ok, the scary revelation from that link isn't about guppies at all. It's that they think pH 8.5 is normal for tap water.
It is, for naturally occurring mineral waters.
pH is not a useful indicator of anything for drinking water. It doesn't matter if coffee of fruit juice are acidic, it's not the acidity that matters. What matters is what's in the water that's causing that pH.
Orange juice has a pH of about 3.5 because it contains citric acid - about 1 mM concentration. That's fine, because citric acid is used by the body as part of aerobic metabolism and protein synthesis... your body already contains lots of citric acid, has ways of dealing with it, and you can consume quite a lot of more before it causes problems. By contrast, a 1 mM solution of hydrofluoric acid has a pH of about 3.0. Drinking a tall cool glass of that will fuck you up and could actually prove lethal without medical attention.
The same is true for alkalis. Green tea has a pH between 9 and 10 and people literally bathe in it. Try getting in a bathtub filled with the same pH of sodium hydroxide solution.
pH alone don't mean shit. You're focusing on the wrong metric.
=Smidge=
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pH is not a useful indicator of anything for drinking water.
Chemistry 0.0001: What happens if your pour something that's very slightly acid or alkaline into a bath of HCl (ie. stomach acid)?
Re: alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:3)
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Re: alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:5, Funny)
Traditionally havoc is wreaked, not wrecked.
Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:5, Informative)
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> Oranges (and other acidic fruits) are renally-alkalizing; that is to say, they may be acidic but they have an alkalizing effect in your body.
Setting aside whether or not that's actually true or not (just googling the term only gives woo dietary sites so it doesn't appear to be an actual medical term - provide sources if ya got 'em)
It doesn't matter because the parent post was comparing the acidity of the fluid itself and not considering what the body does with it.
=Smidge=
Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:4, Interesting)
Which led me to discover that UK and EU regulations allow pH levels between 6.5 and 9.5 for tap water!
Here in the Netherlands, I think they aim for a slightly alkaline pH in order to avoid corrosion and heavy-metal leaching. Some municipal water lines are made of cast iron and some old houses have lead plumbing.
Happily my local tap water is pH 7.11, which is close enough to neutral to offset the coffee I keep making)
I doubt that the buffering capacity of any tap water is enough to have a significant impact on the acids of coffee. You need 7 mL of 0.1 mol/L NaOH (pH 13!) to neutralize the acids in a small cup of coffee. [nature.com]
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Here in the Netherlands, I think they aim for a slightly alkaline pH in order to avoid corrosion and heavy-metal leaching.
I thought they do it because the Dutch don't drink water unless it's passed through ground up roasted seeds from the Coffea plant. ;-)
You seem to know a lot about coffee by the way
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Every fish that lives in saltwater?
Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:5, Funny)
All the good stuff is acidic rather than alkaline. Black coffee is as far from neutral as this branded drink but in the opposite direction on the pH Scale.
I want to believe that, but how can we tell that's not a lye?
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Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:4, Informative)
right - most alkaline taste pretty bad too. While by no means a reliable method because losts of things that taste good/sweet etc will certainly prove quite toxic and things like medications at least taken in the correct dosage are healthful often taste terrible - its still a good clue.
If something tastes awful (alkali water does at that) its reasonable to guess - I should not eat/drink a bunch of this in absence of better information. "This tastes terrible" is millions of years of evolution way of telling you - DONT EAT THAT
Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:5, Funny)
"This tastes terrible" is millions of years of evolution way of telling you - DONT EAT THAT
Dr. Hibbert: Another broccoli-related death.
Marge: But I thought broccoli was--
Dr. Hibbert: Oh yes. One of the deadliest plants on Earth. Why, it tries to warn you itself with its terrible taste.
Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny thing - raw broccoli tastes bitter (to most people) because of the sulforaphane. Steaming the broccoli gets rid of much of the sulforaphane, making it taste much better. Sulforaphane is a potent toxin that cruciferous plants use to protect themselves. So yeah it's actually the toxin in the plant that tastes bad.
Oddly, a lot of people can't taste sulforaphane. To most people it tastes really bad, some people don't taste it at all.
Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:4, Informative)
Well yes it's highly toxic to insects, fungi, bacteria, etc. And even to the broccoli itself - a scar is created where the sulforaphane is produced by releasing and myrosinase and glucoraphanin to form sulforaphane.
In humans, it has several effects, some bad, some arguably good in some instances. For example it is said that it kills cancer cells. Because it kills cells, cancer cells and healthy cells.
Which is NOT to say broccoli as a whole is bad for you.
Broccoli is rich in several nutrients. Just pointing out that the bad-tasting part of broccoli is produced as a protective toxin.
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Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember: These are the exact same people who think vaccines give you autism, but will happily drink quack medicine all day long...
Nice education system you have there, America.
Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember: These are the exact same people who think vaccines give you autism, but will happily drink quack medicine all day long...
Nice education system you have there, America.
It is pretty silly to claim this is an issue because of the American education system.
In Germany (which has a top notch education system) many of the water supply systems (which supply excellent quality water) are having problems because use has dropped off.
It's become a national obsession to drink their Sprudel, and drinking tap water or offering it to guests is considered terrible. One diference though is Sprudel is fortified with carbonic acid so it's lower pH.
Even if they don't want Sprudel, almost all will drink bottled water.
Meanwhile, back here in 'Murrica, my tap water is more pure than a lot of bottled water, a alkaline via dolomitic carbonates. Stick the required filter on it, and It would be better than most bottled water.
And then again, there are the plasticizers in water bottles. While Bisphenol-A has been banned, the replacement plasticizers replacing it haven't been tested well.
So unless the smart people in the rest of the world are drinikng out of nalgene or high quality stainless bottles, they are probably getting dosed with something as well.
But then, I'm aproduct of th e"murric eddycation system too, so take what I saw with a grain of salt. But these folk are products of good education systems, so they must know what they are doing.
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In Germany (which has a top notch education system) many of the water supply systems (which supply excellent quality water) are having problems because use has dropped off.
Yeah, bottled water stupidity is universal.
OTOH the Germans did invent the Brita water filter so nobody has an excuse for not drinking tap water.
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Those filters are only relevant for making coffee or tea.
Unfiltered water still contains the minerals and tastes much better.
However if you cook it, the minerals fall out, or depending on the kind of tear or coffee they affect the taste.
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Those filters are only relevant for making coffee or tea.
Unfiltered water still contains the minerals and tastes much better.
However if you cook it, the minerals fall out, or depending on the kind of tear or coffee they affect the taste.
If you want a real treat, try a sip or two of distilled water. Awful. But don't drink much - some claim it can mess with the bodies electrolytes. Probably not, although the taste usually makes people not want to take more than a couple sips.
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Well, as a child you should not drink a bottle of it.
But I doubt in a daily dose for an adult it is a problem.
Never tried it though, teachers say it tastes like nothing.
However they say the same about pure alcohol, or claim methanol has no smell.
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But don't drink much - some claim it can mess with the bodies electrolytes
These claims have as much behind them as alkaline water.
Drink as much as you want. You're going to reach water toxicity before it causes issues with electrolytes.
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In Germany (which has a top notch education system) many of the water supply systems (which supply excellent quality water) are having problems because use has dropped off.
Yeah, bottled water stupidity is universal.
OTOH the Germans did invent the Brita water filter so nobody has an excuse for not drinking tap water.
I did not know the origins of that device - thanks much.
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Drinking bottled water is in Germany not very common, except for "Sprudel" (aka Soda).
Bottled water is mostly bought by foreigners who do not believe that our tap water is in fact called "Trinkwasser".
I for my part know no one who is buying normal (aka without CO2) bottled water for drinking, well, I mean: I know no German.
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I don't see how drinking less tap water would cause an appreciable difference in domestic water consumption, compared to washing oneself, cleaning, laundry, toilet flushing, watering plants/garden etc.
I'm not advocating for drinking more bottled water, there are many reasons to avoid this. But I just don't think "drinking" is a huge part of the water use of the average German (or any western domestic water supply)
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Yeah, because people who live places other than the US would NEVER be anti-vax. Oh wait, the guy who started the whole movement [wikipedia.org] was a European, educated at the Imperial College of Medicine and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. Those evil American schools must have gotten to him too!
Go peddle your bigotry somewhere else, asshole.
Is that the sound of a pot calling a kettle black?
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Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:4, Informative)
The body naturally regulates blood pH within a narrow range, 7.35-7.45 normally. If your body is successfully doing that, and you manage to ingest something (alkaline water, calcium supplements, super-high protein diet.) that pushes the body out of that range, you're making the body work harder.
There's another word for that: stress. Stress is biologically defined as an organism's response to anything that moves it out of its ideal homeostatic range. Middle aged bodies will probably take the stress of their owners trying to sledgehammer their blood pH into in alkalosis in stride. Since many conditions of aging have a tendency to induce acidosis (e.g. kidney and lung problems), alkaline water *may* be helpful for *some* seniors, although playing chemistry set with your blood without medical supervision is just plain dumb.
But kids -- barring some kind of medical condition like diabetes, their metabolism is as perfect as it will ever be in their lives. Trying to push them into alkalosis will at best do nothing, at worst make them experience the stress of failing disregulation old people have to cope with.
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The whole premise of the product is that "we are all too acid and that is why we have health problems". Maybe that's generally true, but it is not going to be true for everybody. And "treating" for a condition you don't actually have is obviously dangerous. The only way to really know if you have the condition is testing. As far as I am concerned, anybody who blindly consumes products that claim to treat a disease/condition without consulting a doctor or at least doing some independent research
Re: alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:2)
Same people who consume something to get rid of "toxins" but can't name a single toxin they're trying to eliminate when asked.
Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:4, Funny)
"We breathe too much oxygen, stick your head in a bucket of water"
Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the whole reason for the "alkaline water" fad is just that. So much of what we consume is acidic. The fad thought is consuming the alkaline water balances out the body.
My answer to that is to tell them to hold their breath for 30 seconds. The bad feeling you get is due to a tiny increase in blood acidity due to CO2, you brain has a special gland to detect it.
If your blood was too acid (as they claim), you'd feel like that all day long . Do you...?
Re:alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:4, Informative)
it's not though. Your body senses excess CO2, if you have acidemia, it doesn't feel the same.
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Excess CO2 essentially causes acidosis since CO2 dissolves in blood to make carbonic acid.
Yes it does. CO2 is also in the blood as Carbaminohemoglobin and carbonate, not just free CO2. CO2 and O2 seem to use a mix of techniques some of which share the same pathways as acidosis but some of which don't. As with everything biological it's very messy and complex.
Re: alkaline is the wrong direction (Score:2)
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Free radicals and antioxidants are profoundly important. But the general public is too ignorant to draw conclusions on their own. About the only message we can reliably get to them is: eat some colorful vegetables on a regular basis. Anything else we try to explain seems to get warped into snake oil. To the degree that people waste money on contaminated water and injure their children. The point of all this was to make people healthier, not send them into liver failure. If a person doesn't know the differen
Naah... that bullshit is much older. (Score:2)
Alkaline diet is based on acid ash hypothesis [wikipedia.org], which in turn is based on observations of a 19th century French scientist Claude Bernard, [wikipedia.org] that feeding rabbits meat turns their urine more acidic.
Let me repeat that.
Feeding rabbits, who tend to eat plants, with MEAT - makes their piss more acidic. [wikipedia.org]
Not really something one would want to base their diet on.
And yet... people have spent their savings trying to cure themselves from cancer that way, sometimes literally taking injections of baking soda. [bbc.com]
Because charlata [wikipedia.org]
Regulation needed (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a prime example of why a market needs regulation and why existing regulation should be complied with. No-one should be allowed to make vague unproven claims of health benefits to boost sales of products.
I hope this company gets sued out of existence. They have no right to exist and the harm they have inflicted by trying to scam gullible people out of their money should be punished harshly.
Somes up most consumerism products surely? (Score:3)
None of us *need* most of the crap we buy so in a sense we're all gullible when it comes to some purchases (a phone costing the same as a 2nd hand car, sign me up! etc) but yes, supposed health drinks should be monitored much more closely.
But then if that did happen would would happen to poor Gwynie and her vaginal eggs? :)
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No-one should be allowed to make vague unproven claims of health benefits to boost sales of products.
Surely, the claims are vague, but from a quick browsing of their website, I can't find anything that is specific enough to be either unproven or clearly false.
For example [ref] [drinkrealwater.com]:
Many nutritionists believe that an acidic body environment is unhealthy. In contrast, Real Water is manufactured at an alkaline pH of 9.0.
(Bathing in or drinking vinegar is unhealthy according to at least two people in the world. Our water is not vinegar.)
This changes the water from positive (+) ionized to negative (-) ionized. The transformation is measured in millivolts (mV) by an ORP meter. ORP stands for Oxidation Reduction Potential. When the water is negatively (-) ionized, it is absorbed by the body more easily, allowing for maximum hydration.
(Our water has more OH(-) ions than H3O(+) ions. Cells in a petri dish are a bit more effective in absorbing alkaline water, which is a totally minor effect if you drink it and it is mixed with stomach acid, but at le
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This is a prime example of why a market needs regulation and why existing regulation should be complied with. No-one should be allowed to make vague unproven claims of health benefits to boost sales of products.
I hope this company gets sued out of existence. They have no right to exist and the harm they have inflicted by trying to scam gullible people out of their money should be punished harshly.
We can't regulate everything. Encouraging people to think critically and make their own conclusions is a better holistic path.
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This is a prime example of why a market needs regulation and why existing regulation should be complied with. No-one should be allowed to make vague unproven claims of health benefits to boost sales of products.
I hope this company gets sued out of existence. They have no right to exist and the harm they have inflicted by trying to scam gullible people out of their money should be punished harshly.
We can't regulate everything. Encouraging people to think critically and make their own conclusions is a better holistic path.
It's not a "better" path but it is an important one. Normal people have to work and look after families and so on; companies can work 24/7 on constructing plausible-sounding lies. Regulators work on inspecting those claims so that normal people don't have to give up their jobs and become chemical analysts or statisticians (assuming that they could even access the needed data).
An educated public is certainly a basic requirement but it's not enough on its own, and the imaginary hand of the free market always
Alkaline itself wouldn't do this (Score:5, Informative)
If the water was dangerously alkaline it would burn the digestive tract long before it affected the liver. I strongly suspect there's some other form of contamination either from their source or the alkalinity itself corroding some equipment not rated to deal with alkaline liquids and leaching chemicals into the water. And it was something to do with ion levels (eg too much sodium, magnesium, potassium etc) that would affect the kidneys, not the liver.
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Possible, but not necessarily. enzymes in the liver could be way more sensitive to PH than your digestive tract. Seems like there is some evidence for liver damage from alkaline water: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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The article that you cite talks about water with pH 11, while this product has pH 9. Since that's a factor 100 difference in concentration, I don't think you can apply its conclusions to the present situation with pH 9 water.
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I was mostly just responding to your part that high alkalinity wouldn't affect the liver as digestive tract would burn first. Given that enzymes can be very sensitive to pH that isn't necessarily true. However the article states: "The solution was then diluted with regular water to make high (0.8 mg/L) and low (0.3 mg/L) concentrations of HRW each at a pH of approximately 8.0." so I'm not sure they fed at 11 - may not matter either as dose is probably a big part of the equation. I would agree that the artic
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However the article states: "The solution was then diluted with regular water to make high (0.8 mg/L) and low (0.3 mg/L) concentrations of HRW each at a pH of approximately 8.0."
TBH I hadn't seen that part before, but the way I read it, they tried several different kinds of water, one of them being EAW water (pH 11) and another HRW (hydrogen-rich, pH 8). It says somewhere:
EAW water did not affect the liver histology in the RD [regular diet] group or the HFD [high-fat diet] group.
So, the stronger alkaline water had less effect. Weird article; the hypothesis seems to be that dissolved hydrogen has an impact.
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So, the stronger alkaline water had less effect. Weird article; the hypothesis seems to be that dissolved hydrogen has an impact.
It's been a long time since high school chemistry but isn't that how pH works? Access of H ions makes things acid, access of OH ions makes things alkaline.
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H(+) ions, or rather, H3O(+) ions are what makes water acidic. Dissolved hydrogen gas, H2, doesn't do anything to the acidity. It's also not particularly reactive at room temperature; farts for example have a lot of hydrogen in them. That's why it strikes me as strange to test the impact of dissolved hydrogen in a diet. The hydrogen will leave your body as a gas via one of the usual three channels.
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Well maybe, but that aside unless the solution was a concentrated hydroxide stomach acids would neutralise it anyway.
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If the water was dangerously alkaline it would burn the digestive tract long before it affected the liver.
You're implying that all organs in the body are able to cope with whatever goes through the digestive tract, what is missing here is the *volume*. I'm going to presume that we're not talking about someone who had a glass of this and ended up hospital at which point you'd be absolutely right.
Remember you can cause kidney failure simply by drinking excessive quantities of perfectly normal water too. Your digestive tract will be fine though.
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Remember you can cause kidney failure simply by drinking excessive quantities of perfectly normal water too. Your digestive tract will be fine though.
Even in this era of faddish and obsessive hydration, kidney damage from water seems to be very rare. Albeit it might not be so rare for people who have diets so out of kilter and poor that their kidneys are always straining to maintain the balances between K, Na, Cl, Ca necessary to keep them alive.
(Likewise, table salt in a generally sound diet is not at all harmful is not at all harmful, contrary to the alarmist propaganda propagated from cardiologists.)
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Even in this era of faddish and obsessive hydration, kidney damage from water seems to be very rare.
Of course it's rare. The body has an incredible range of coping mechanisms. You really need to try to screw it up and most of the cases you find of people overhydrating are usually the result of drugs or another medical condition.
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If the water was dangerously alkaline it would burn the digestive tract long before it affected the liver.
Huh? Wouldn't it just react with the stomach acid as soon as you drank it?
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Unless it was really concentrated then yes, most likely. Almost certainly there's some other form of contamination.
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It's more to it than that - it depends on what makes the water acidic or alkaline and what materials that are dissolved into the water. Some materials are dissolved by acid, some by alkaline. Combine the pH of the water with some other stuff you ingest and you can get strange side effects.
Flint, Michigan is a prime example of a bad situation by not understanding the effects of chemistry.
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Contamination seems plausible.
I agree that there alkaline water can't alter blood pH the way acids and bases neutralize each other in a test tube, but the chemical salts created by the acid-base reaction in the stomach would make it into the bloodstream, and who knows what they do when they get there.
I suspect humans are pretty well adapted to ingesting water with a range of mineral contents, for example desert dwellers, but people who follow health fads do all kinds of unnatural things, like drink way mor
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Maybe that stuff neutralised the stomach acid far enough that it failed to kill some bacteria.
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This. It is highly unlikely that the pH alone has anything to do with the liver problems. It may not even be the water, it may be something else that people who buy “Alkaline Water” also purchase. And it may not be a single product. Of it is the water, I suspect a contaminant such as a heavy metal (Nickel?) either in the water or getting leached into the water under certain conditions.
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Infants are different though, the digestive lining is less developed and more in contact with the blood stream.
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The classic problem of bulimics who cause havoc on the pH of their systems with their incessant loss of large amounts of stomach acid is sudden onset heart arrhythmia, from misregulation of the heartbeat due the out of whack blood pH and lack of available calcium ions. A glass or two of slightly alkaline water is absolutely nothing compared to vomiting up the contents of your stomach twice a day, and it takes months and months for the stress to accumulate to the point of real danger.
I agree with you that t
This is what happens (Score:2)
when children don't pay attention in science classes.
It's labelled as pH9. Those charlatans boast about it.
Re:This is what happens (Score:4, Interesting)
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Probably. Liver failure is pretty extreme.
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The numbers are misleading.
The difference between PHP 8.5 and PHP 9.0 is a factor of 5 of H2O+ ions.
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H3O+ ions, obviously.
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I call him Elron because it annoys scientologits. Got a problem with that?
-jcr
No, not at all. Annoy away there, crj. Targets riper than a tomato in spring. Just try not to assume too much.
Re: Snake oil bullshit. (Score:2)
It can't be the intended composition (Score:5, Informative)
The ingredients appear to be purified water, potassium, magnesium [instacart.com], leading to pH 9.0. If you add metallic K and Mg to pure H2O, you get a solution of KOH and Mg(OH)2. For pH 9 in purified water with a strong alkaline (KOH), we're talking about a 1E-5 mol/l concentration. A few drops of stomach acid would neutralize a cup of this mixture and the K and Mg are also not harmful at these concentrations.
The chemistry is a bit more tricky in combination with natural dissolved CO2, which would form a HCO3(-)/CO3(2-) buffer, but I can hardly believe that there would be enough to cause problems at pH 9, since there would be about 2E-5 mol/l CO2 dissolved in water under atmospheric conditions.
I'd guess that it's more likely that there was contamination in the water.
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My guess would be that someone screwed up when turning the water more acidic. Maybe too much magnesium although Wikipedia suggests that could cause kidney failure rather than liver failure so IDK.
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Article states the water was the only common factor.
Why? (Score:2)
Infused? (Score:2)
''is infused with negative ions and has a pH of 9.0''
Dollars to doughnuts, I bet they buy sodium hydroxide in 50 gallon barrels. And yes, we call it drano and lye. But, we also use a weak solution of it to make better crust on soft pretzels. Somehow I would think that there's another adulterant that passed through the manufacturing process. Either way, they're fucked.
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But, we also use a weak solution of it to make better crust on soft pretzels
Soft pretzels don't need lye. Hard pretzels do in order to be "hard".
People are idiots (Score:3)
Ray Kurzweil (Score:4)
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Alcor's "preservation" technique is available to read. It's fucking brutal. Antioxidants followed by suicide followed by mechanical decapitation followed by freezing (without an oscillating magnetic field like the sashimi boats use, from what I can tell). Interestingly they are using a veterinary anti-inflamatory as it has superior effect in humans to FDA-approved types. But severing the spinal cord seems like a huge mistake.
Ray should focus on propagating his knowledge - relying on Alcor for anything ma
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Salt is bad for you. Also, don't take it with a spoonful of sugar: also bad for you.
Fads (Score:2)
Fads are maladaptive. Darwin wins again.
COVID rroofing the kiddies, no doubt (Score:2)
I can't help but wonder how many of the parents are anti-vaxxers.
Beware any "negative ion" products (Score:2)
There are many snake oil products on the market touting the health benefits of the "negative ions" they provide. In many cases, those products are laced with cheap, radioactive thorium. As you can imagine, slowly bombarding your body with radiation is the opposite of good for your health. The Thought Emporium did an excellent video [youtube.com] on this subject.
Real Water doesn't seem like they're using any thorium based on their FAQ, but I wouldn't rule it out.
Holy Crap! They need to watch some old movies (Score:3)
Doesn't anybody watch Westerns any more? The thirsty crew stopping at a water-hole and then the captain telling them not to drink is a classic trope. The line is something like, "NO! Don't drink it. It's alkali water.". There are no plants growing near it, that's one way to tell.
Did they not watch "Idiocracy"? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
If it was a dosage failure which just affected a small amount of bottles there's nothing left to test.
Re: (Score:2)
Given the number of people poisoned I think the odds are there would still be some bottles remaining, or to put it another way all the people affected drinking all the bottles they had is unlikely given that this is supplies from home by the sounds of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Most likely because it's just a "health product". That leaves it up to the company to ensure safety. Any lab analysis would be on them.
The police aren't going to do it. It's just up to some poor suckers to file lawsuits and maybe fund their own lab work. Neither of which is cheap.
Re: (Score:3)
I 'm surprised that the authorities haven't been able to find the cause, they surely have water samples, why can't they analyse it? They've had since November to do this, that smacks of incompetence to me.
You do understand that not every health interaction is instant right? Smoking causes problems after using tobacco for an amount of time. Lead poisoning effects does not show up the minute it enters the body. Skipping a workout one day does not turn your body instantly into mush. These are are just some examples.
Maybe I'm being Dunning-Kruger here but why can't water be stuck in a Petri dish to find the bacteria in a day or stuck in some machine and analysed with spectroscopy the same day?
More like a lack of understanding of the effects of time.