Water ppm

Does anyone know acceptable ppm(parts per million) for drinking water?

I recently conducted a (very) informal test of water from various sources and I think the results are interesting and a little frightning.

I used a ppm tester to check the purity of the water. However, the test only measures what is in the water that isnt h2o. It could be poop,poison or peanut butter for all I know. I also don’t know what is acceptable but I tested some dirty water as a comparison. Also, I’m not a scientist but the test were pretty consistant. One more thing, I lost some of my notes so the numbers arent all excact but they are pretty close and the spirit of the comparisons are the same. I’ll do another test properly conducted for a junior high class lesson and I’ll post the results if anyone is interested.
please feel free to correct any of my assumtions because I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

First I tested a bottle of " pure spring water" bought at 7/11 and a sample of water delivered to my house. they both tested between 0 and 2 ppm

I tested the water on the 2nd floor of my building and it tested about 64ppm. The same water boiled tested at 75ppm

I tested the water at my roof top apartment and it test at 55ppm and 58 boiled. ( I only boiled it for 3 minutes)

I tested some of my student’s water at their houses and 3 families had non-reverse osmosis water filters and they showed about 45 to 65 ppm tap water and the filtered water was the same or 5 to 10 ppm lower.

One family had an elaberate water cleaning ritual. they used a rather expensive sediment filter under the sink and a charcoal filter at the faucet. they then poured the water into a brita filter and then boiled it before putting it into a table top water heater/filter. the “clean water” actually had more ppm than the sink water. I believe it read a 36. As a comparison I checked the water in their dirty fish tank and it measured around 170ppm.

I also checked 2 houses that had expensive RO filters and both of them had readings of over 25 ppm, about half of their toilet water.

A friend has an RO filter and he says his readings are between 0 and 5ppm. At B&Q the example have set up show the same readings.
from what I can tell an RO filter is supposed to clean the water to a 0 to 5 ppm level.
Both households claim that they recently changed the filters.( they are also very pissed)

One reason could be that chlorine will damage some types of ro membranes. one family had a chlorine filter but it appeared to be cleaning the water after the ro filter not before.

As a final test I took a level table spoon of my own fecal matter and put it in a blender with 225 mml of diet coke. then mywife came in the kitchen and now I’m not allowed to use the blender or go to the bathroom without supervision.

Once again, dont read too much into this test because I don’t know what is an acceptable reading and the tests were conducted in less than laboratory conditions

anyone want to buy a blender?

[quote]As a final test I took a level table spoon of my own fecal matter and put it in a blender with 225 mml of diet coke. then mywife came in the kitchen and now I’m not allowed to use the blender or go to the bathroom without supervision.
[/quote]
And I hope you washed the spoon. Thanks for the chuckle! :laughing:

Human faeces in a blender with coke.
I can’t get that awful, awful image out of my mind now. THANKS A LOT!

It really depends on PPM of what.

Lead or mercury compounds, zero is a good number. Rust, who cares (as long as it’s not ridiculously high). You’d really have to get a breakdown of what is in the water and at what levels.

No idea where you could get your water tested – and get real results – in Taiwan. (Someone recently posted about a job he had here at a hospital, which collected urine samples from schoolkids, took them to the hospital, flushed them, and made up a bunch of fake results to give to the parents.) It might cost you NT$5000 or so; depends on how many things you want to look for. If you really want to be sure of the numbers, try sending to three different labs, and see whether the numbers they give are all pretty similar. Probably under something like “water quality testing” in the phone book.

Well, if they were removing gasoline, fertilizer, and bug-killer contaminants and adding filter charcoal, it was probably a good trade.

BTW, nice toys, dude! :slight_smile: