I have another water question. I have been buying water in the Cleveland area in 2 1/2 gallon containers from a company called Deer Park. The containers show an expiration date of Nov.'00. I called the company to inquire how they went about this and was told the containers were shot with, if I understood the woman correctly, an 'ozone-depleting gas' which prevents bacteria growth. Anybody else hear about anything like this and is it a trustworthy process? Thanks in advance. This is a VERY helpful forum and I'm thankful I found it.

-- susan hakala (smhakala@aol.com), December 05, 1998

Answers

On another thread here I read a warning on storing bottled water-- to keep it in the dark. It was said that light fosters the growth of whatever life might be left in the water. Distilled water should fare better than other kinds.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), December 06, 1998.

Don't know about the "gas" - I'd find out exactly what was being put in the water I was buying.

Tom - about water storage. If you boil water - you kill the biologics that that will grow and give you stomach problems/food poisoning, right? But if you boil "raw" or runoff water, the chemicals and other heavy metal polution in the original water are still there. If there is a lot, this could be a long-term problem. In a short (2-3 week) period, you probably won't drink enough to get ill.

But, if you distill water, you leave behind the chlorine that would keep the water fit to drink. So any biologics present in the transfer pipe, in the spout, or in bottom newly "filled" or "clean" water storage container would be able to multiple like crazy in the nice clean "chemically pure" breeding ground you've provided.

A sealed, distilled water bottle, if absolutely kept pure from the supplier and never contaminated, proabably won't grow biologics, but you couldn't see any except algea or molds anyway, so its a gamble.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), December 08, 1998.

Anything (okay - within reason) that reduces the amount of oxygen in a product will increase it's shelf life.

Think about the vac. packed foods. So long as the temp. is resonable, they stay in good shape.

It would be interesting to find out what they were using...

-- jd (hemwat@bellsouth.net), December 08, 1998.