Counterfeit Distilled Water - The Dirty Truth!
As part of our regular in-house testing we frequently test our distilled water with bacterial 'dip slides' to ensure no bacteria is present. These test strips contain a nutrient agar gel and a coloured dye that reveals if bacteria are present after they have been incubated for 72 hours. We have never had a positive result from any sample of our water in over 10 years - This is a testament to our hygenic practices and the fact that every drop of our water has been steam distilled.
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We thought it would be interesting to test some other 'distilled' waters available from a popular online marketplace as well as other online sellers. The results from three of the tests we performed were quite shocking!
The two samples on the left are from an online marketplace seller advertising "certified distilled water". You can see that both of their samples contain very significant amounts of live bacteria! By contrast the two samples on the the right are our water that were subject to the same test conditions (30 degree incubation for 72 hours) - No bacterial growth whatsoever.
Our guess would be that the counterfeit 'distilled' water on the left is just inferior deionised water that is being mis-sold to consumers. The real danger with this bacteria-laden water is when it is to be used for medical applications such as CPAP machines and nebulisers as the bacteria will be aerosolised and breathed in by the user.
Cheap deionised water is not only microbially unsafe, it will still contain the same levels of heavy metals, pesticides, hormones etc. as tap water as these are not removed by the process.
These dipslide tests are widely available online and are very easy to perform. We welcome our customers to test our water any time!