I've read a few articles about plastic pipes recently, and it seems the general consensus seems to be that all plastic pipes leech some amount of material into the water - however whether that's at a level that is bad for us is as yet unknown.
Before PEX, copper was king for house water pipes. It's still used a lot, but the main argument for not using it is labour costs - PEX is flexible, copper needs skill to bend it. However copper also leeches into water! But copper is an essential nutrient, so it may actually be beneficial, but at high levels it is toxic.
Likely not all of the impurities. Those with boiling temperature similar to water will probably mostly remain (it's more complex than that).
A better question would be: Are there dangerous levels of contaminants in after a single distillation pass? For municipal water - probably not. For chemical factory effluent - probably yes. Plastic pipes after wildfires - no idea.
Also, you need to add something to distilled water, as it's shocking to a body. Almost anything will do, though you may need to think about mineral content in the longer term.
Our society is too much in the habit of imagining we can just put a technical fix at the end of the pipe (literally in this case) to compensate for the upstream problems, whether it’s carbon sequestration, or using mammoth amounts of petrochemicals and environmental debt to build renewable infrastructure, or in this case “fixing” the water we mess up on the front end with massive energy use on the backend.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 31.8 ms ] threadBefore PEX, copper was king for house water pipes. It's still used a lot, but the main argument for not using it is labour costs - PEX is flexible, copper needs skill to bend it. However copper also leeches into water! But copper is an essential nutrient, so it may actually be beneficial, but at high levels it is toxic.
Ie. Your faucet at home boils and recondenses all water before you put it in your glass.
Humans only drink a couple of liters of water per day, so the energy cost isn't large.
Then you don't need to worry about keeping massive pipe networks and storage tanks 100% sterile or pure.
A better question would be: Are there dangerous levels of contaminants in after a single distillation pass? For municipal water - probably not. For chemical factory effluent - probably yes. Plastic pipes after wildfires - no idea.
Also, you need to add something to distilled water, as it's shocking to a body. Almost anything will do, though you may need to think about mineral content in the longer term.