'Very, very pink' tap water in Alberta town
citynews.ca
citynews.ca
The whole reason permanganate is added in the first place is twofold: it oxidizes simple organics all the way to carbon dioxide (think nail polish remover, denatured alcohol), and it oxidizes soluble ferrous iron to insoluble ferric iron. The byproduct of the oxidation, manganese dioxide, is insoluble and if balanced correctly the treatment does not increase manganese levels in the water.
Whenever I learn something like this, I always appreciate chemistry a little more. That is absolutely fascinating IMO.
The first thing that comes to mind is what the person who came up with the idea was doing at the time. Sometimes when we are intending to do one thing, we invent a solution to another problem, maybe one we didn't even know we had, along the way.
But what about a small dose taken over years, and interacting with the thousands of small doses of synthetic chemicals we have in our body because of processed food, hygiene products, clothes, surface treatments and medicine ?
This we have no way to know.
There are already so many reasons to get in contact with synthetic chemicals. I think it's sane policy to limit them a much as we can when we can, especially in something as ubiquitous as water.
Yes having drinkable water is essential, but some cities manage to have it with much less additives. It should be the default goal for anything related to public health.
Such a pointless distinction. There are many chemicals that occur naturally and will kill you.
And any matter is a chemical. Using "synthetic" as a qualifier allow me to distinguish "fructose" from "paracetamol". You will less likely see important traces of cobra venom in the water.
It's not perfect, but I fail to find a better term.
Why are you worrying about cumulative doses over years, when this problem literally existed for minutes?
We do have a way to know. It's called chemistry, and one of the primary goals of chemistry is to be able to predict what sort of reactions will occur in a mixture of molecules. Anyone who takes organic chemistry should be able to tell you how alkenes, alkynes, aldehydes, ketones, ketals, alcohols, aromatics, amines, amides, peroxides, ethers, esters, etc. are likely to react in various conditions, and hopefully what factors promote or retard such reactions.
When I was a kid I was visiting my aunt who lived outside of Denver. I was walking around their property and on the other side of a fence was a stream which was exactly this color. I've always wondered what the deal was
To get manganese ions, you'd have to acidify the water somehow too.
PP-treated water is safer than chlorine-treated water.
A quick google search suggests that they are used to "improve water clarity" [0], so at a guess you don't use enough of it to turn the water pink.
There's also the fact that they think it's concentrated enough that you should avoid bathing in it if you have sensitive skin. That certainly doesn't inspire confidence that you should drink it (exposing some very important skin, that's usually more sensitive).
[0] http://www.livestrong.com/article/71333-use-potassium-perman...
If the pictures are true to the situation, the concentrations are tiny. You can look up videos of people putting less than a teaspoon into water to get the same result.
IIRC, PP can be a precursor to chlorine. But, you're comparing two different chemicals here and what applies to one likely doesn't apply to another.
There is a chance your skin will feel like it's burning if it's not fully dissolved in water. I wouldn't advise touching the dry powder. The shards will embed into your skin and it will feel like an open wound filled with Tabasco for a long time.
Fun-fact: If you mix it with glycerol it combusts, so don't use any lotions with it if you get some on your skin.
ETA: I don't know what's going on, but there's a lot of low-effort responses in this thread. Is it the hours?
potassium permanganate does not contain chlorine
Why not just add a hypochlorite to water if the end goal is to disinfect with chlorine?
What I was going for was: just because they do the same thing doesn't mean they're the same at all.
HCl + KMnO4 -> KCl + MnCl2 + Cl2 + H2O
But yeah, in practice you're going to disinfect with Cl₂ gas or NaClO. The water plant I worked at switched from Cl₂ to ClO¯ as primary disinfectant, and the operators were all for it. No more need to manually switch out Cl₂ tanks, no more Cl₂ venting issues (spilling NaClO is nowhere near as bad a Cl₂ leak). (The plant also used O₃ for bonus disinfection as well. The operators hated it at first, but now would throw a conniption fit were it broken).
Converting KMnO₄ to Cl¯ would require a nuclear reaction. Chlorides are generally soluble, so it's not going to cause an insoluble salt to slowly dissolve as a permanganate salt precipitates instead. It does appear to be a stronger oxidizing agent than Cl₂ (and Cl¯ and ClO¯ and ClO₂¯), but there are likely better reducing agents in most water than dissolved chlorine ions.
I use a Brita filter instead.
For cold drinks; bottled water. We go through a ton of it.
The joys of living in London (UK) and it's crappy water :(
Having lived in London most of my life, and spent a few years in the US (MI), I can tell you we've got it good. I used to use bottled water in the US as I didn't enjoy drinking chlorine flavour/smelling water...
Now, when I lived in Hull, terrible water
YM3: Our water is so hard, it beats up the cops that come 'round to take the report from the little old lady.
YM4: Our water is so hard, I once got arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, by a bunch of beaten-up cops, for holdin' a hose in me own garden.
YM1: I used to carry a chisel round in my pocket, in case I got thirsty.
YM2: I once forgot my chisel, had a drink anyway, and broke all my teeth off.
YM3: We only 'ad one chisel for all of us, and we had to trade it off between the kitchen faucet, and breaking up the toilet water into pieces small enough to flush.
YM4: We had to rent our chisel, and on days when we couldn't afford it, we had to follow cops around and drink their broken-off teeth when they got beaten up.
All: Aye, but we were 'appy in those days....
The attitude of "Oh that's absolutely demonstrably awful, here's X to subsidize your life," needs to stop.
How about we create societies where the onus of providing clean drinking water to humans is not arguable?
(the post you replied to is pointing out that the potassium permanganate that turned the water pink is not especially dangerous, not arguing that the people should be given more potassium permanganate)
The article indicates that potassium permanganate is what caused the water to be pink.
The commenter is explaining that potassium permanganate is harmless and usually used as a water purifier anyway.
I have no idea how that can be interpreted as "Oh that's absolutely demonstrably awful, here's X to subsidize your life,"
Harmless at what level? Because even the most harmless chemical substance will become harmful at high enough doses.
Next time, you might want to use Di-hydrogen monoxide, it's a much scarier name. Everybody knows monoxide is dangerous on anything.
1: http://bluecollarprepping.blogspot.com/2014/08/potassium-per...
If you mean that people want non-pink water, I think that's reasonable. But I also think it's reasonable that the reason the pink color is explained by the actual purifying process. I too concede that the water controlling authorities screwed up by using too much of the chemical, but it seems not in a dangerous amount, and they did well to communicate exactly why, and they also conducted tests to ensure safety of the water, thus effectively following up and checking the potential problems with their screw-up.
As far as government mistakes go, I think this one was relatively mild and handled in an adequate manner.
I should have been more diligent and usually am.
I was projecting other feelings from previous arguments and this isn't the place for it and I deserve those down votes as it clearly wasn't a super helpful addition to the discussion.
Sorry and thanks.
Or drink your own piss, ala Bear Grylls. Healthy, and helps build character. I just think that these Albertans are just a bit too... spoiled I think?
Do people really not know where their hot water comes from?
This must be from Zootopia =))
Same colour, but not the same texture
RO systems waste water as that is how they work, expect your water usage to go up (how much depends on a lot of factors, for us it did not impact our water bill).
Whole house RO systems are probably a non-starter, keeping the water pressure up high enough seems like it would be very expensive.