Boiling the water to kill off germs has been a common practice for centuries. It is considered one of the best ways to ensure drinking water safety at home. However, with time, the pollutants that enter water supplies have changed and there is a need for better water filtration techniques.
Today, we are going to analyze the effectiveness of boiled water and how purified water is different from it.
While it may seem like that the process of distillation works similar to water purification in RO water purifiers, it is not. For instance, distillation does remove all kinds of dissolved solids but it cannot remove all volatile organic compounds found in water. Many VOCs have a boiling point lower than water, which means they also get transferred into the steam chamber and when the steam cools down and converts back into water, the VOCs are once again present in it.
| Boiled Water | Purified Water |
| Since most germs and viruses cannot survive in high temperatures, boiling water is an easy, do-it-yourself process for making water safe for consumption. | Purified water is defined by the lack of impurities present in it. In purified water the contaminants are either completely eliminated or reduced to extremely low levels. |
| Sometimes water is also distilled to make it purer than simply boiled water. The process of distillation includes boiling the water till it becomes steam and then capturing the steam and cooling it down to make water again. In this way, the hard water elements and metals dissolved in the water are left behind in the boiling vessel. | Reverse osmosis is one of the widely used and highly regarded water purification technique. Tap water is forced through a semi permeable osmotic membrane. The membrane only allows the water molecules to pass through, resulting in water which is over 99 per cent pure and safe for drinking. |
| Boiling water is also used for sterilising medical equipment in remote areas. | Purified water is widely used in homes, offices, hospitals and restaurants today. |
Why even distilled water is not completely safe in comparison to purified water?
Also, in this day and age, boiling or distillation are cumbersome processes which take a lot of time and energy. Need to be repeated over and over again for getting safe drinking water. On the other hand, RO water purifiers provide safe drinking water at the touch of a button or a flick of the tap – depending on the make and model.
So, in conclusion to the argument that which water is better, we think that purified beats boiled water handsomely, and buying an RO water purifier for your home is the better choice between the two.
