Doctors advise using only water that has been boiled once to make tea and coffee. That is, each time the kettle must be completely renewed, pouring out the remnants of the old liquid before adding a new one.

What is the prejudice about re-boiling? Why can't you boil water twice? We will have to touch not only the physical, but also the chemical properties of the precious moisture.

What happens to water when heated?

Without water, the human body cannot exist. Eighty percent of our body consists of liquid. Fresh water is necessary for normal metabolism, removal of toxins from the body.

But there are certain problems with water in the modern world. Not every resident of a metropolis can get the required amount of liquid from a well or from a natural source. In addition, we must not forget about the natural pollution of the modern world. Life-giving moisture enters our homes through miles of pipes. Naturally, disinfectants are added to it. For example, chlorine. If we talk about cleaning systems, then their quality leaves much to be desired. In some cities, they have not changed for decades.

Boiling was invented to use this water for cooking and drinking. There is only one reason - to destroy, if possible, all the bacteria and microbes that are in raw water. There is an anecdote on this topic:

The girl asks her mother:

Why are you boiling water?
To kill all microbes.
Is it that I will drink tea with the corpses of microbes?

Indeed, most bacteria and microbes die under the influence of high temperatures. But what else happens to the composition of H2O when the temperature reaches 100 degrees Celsius?

1) Boiling evaporates oxygen and water molecules.

2) Any water contains certain impurities. At high temperatures, they do not go anywhere. Can you drink sea water if you boil it? At 100°C, oxygen and water atoms will be removed, but all salts will remain. But the most interesting thing is that their concentration will increase, as the water itself has become less. Therefore, sea water after boiling is unsuitable for drinking.

3) Hydrogen isotopes are present in water molecules. These are heavy chemical elements that are resistant to temperatures up to 100°C. They settle to the bottom, "weighting" the liquid.

Is re-boiling dangerous?

Why do it? The bacteria died during the first boil. There is no need for re-heat treatment. Too lazy to change the contents of the teapot? Well, let's figure it out, is it possible to boil again?

1. Boiled water is completely devoid of taste.. If it is boiled several times, it becomes very, very tasteless. Some may argue that raw water also has no taste. Not at all. Do a little experiment.

At regular intervals, drink tap water, filtered water, boiled once and boiled many times. All of these liquids will taste DIFFERENT. When you drink the last version (boiled many times), there will even be an unpleasant aftertaste in your mouth, some kind of metallic taste.

2. Boiling "kills" water. The more often the heat treatment occurs, the more useless the liquid is in the long run. Oxygen evaporates, in fact, the usual formula of H2O is violated from the point of view of chemistry. For this reason, the name of such a drink arose - "dead water".

3. As mentioned above, after boiling, all impurities and salts remain. What happens with each reheat? Oxygen leaves, water too. Consequently, the concentration of salts increases. Of course, the body does not immediately feel it.

The toxicity of such a drink is negligible. But in "heavy" water, all reactions occur more slowly. Deuterium (a substance that is released from hydrogen during boiling) tends to accumulate. And this is already harmful.

4. We usually boil chlorinated water. In the process of heating to 100 ° C, chlorine reacts with organic substances. As a result, carcinogens are formed. Frequent boiling increases their concentration. And these substances are extremely undesirable for humans, as they provoke cancer.

Boiled water is no longer useful. Re-processing makes it harmful. Therefore, follow these simple rules:

• for boiling each time pour fresh water;
• do not boil the liquid again and do not add fresh water to its remains;
• before boiling the water, let it stand for several hours;
• after pouring boiling water into a thermos (for preparing a medicinal collection, for example), close it with a cork after a few minutes, not immediately.

Drink for health!

It can be tap, spring, bottled, structured, live, dead, dirty, etc. Most of all, we would like to drink pure water, which is beneficial for a person. Boiling is rightly considered one of the ways to neutralize water from various kinds of dangers. But increasingly, even authoritative people say that you can boil water only once. Why can't you boil water twice? The question is not really idle. First, it concerns our health. Secondly, it is not so easy to change habits in the age of crazy speeds.

When answering the question of why it is impossible to boil water twice, various "experts" give a seemingly irrefutable algorithm of judgments:

Water from the tap contains different amounts of chemicals dissolved in it at the purification stage, and on the way from the reservoir to the kettle, colonies of bacteria “prescribed” in the pipes join this cocktail;

To get rid of uninvited guests, the liquid must be brought to 100 ° Celsius: this is useful;

If the procedure is repeated, then along with harmful chlorine compounds and no less harmful bacteria, beneficial oxygen and hydrogen disappear from the water;

The less oxygen, the more the taste of water is distorted;

Without hydrogen, there is nothing to neutralize heavy substances;

The more often and longer the water is boiled, the harder and heavier it becomes, which is why you cannot boil water twice.

In various sources, in addition to such pseudo-scientific arguments about the dangers of repeated boiling, facts such as an increase in the amount of organochlorine compounds, dioxins and carcinogens that cause cancer and peeling of the heels are added. Cautious young mothers are already afraid of bathing babies in boiled water.

But even a school graduate can easily refute the terrible arguments when he solves a chemistry problem that asks how many times you need to pour water into a 1.5-liter kettle in order to increase the concentration of the notorious heavy water by 10 times? Answer: you need to evaporate half the water poured into the kettle 157 times without a break!

For your information, in order for the water in the kettle to become completely heavy, continuous boiling for several decades is necessary! By the way, such water is a valuable industrial product, 1 kg of which costs from $200 to $250. If you have free time, you can earn extra money.

In addition, if you are "lucky" to drink a whole mug, there will be no harm from this. Within a few days, all the contents that are unnecessary for the body will be excreted in the most natural way.

Drink boiled water, and don't worry about why you can't boil water twice, there are more important things to do.

There is another new, very attractive teaching - about structured water. The beautiful clusters that form the molecules of such water are also useful for the human body. It is believed that boiling affects structures destructively. But it is in the process of heating. And if you express your gratitude to the water you are going to drink, or just think of something good, the structures of magical beauty will again gather into a unique pattern.

From the faucets flows a liquid that is loudly called water. But, even without taking into account its dubious purity, well spoiled by the diseased environment, if you remember what rusty and old communications it flows through before getting into the glass, then the hand is unlikely to rise to bring it to your mouth. And right! It is still reckless to trustfully drink what the public services treat us to.

The water molecule consists of three atoms - one of them is oxygen, the other two are hydrogen. Boiling is accompanied by the formation of steam, in which oxygen molecules are released. And it consists of three phases:

• the appearance of small groups of bubbles on the surface of the water (it is interesting that the characteristic, well-known sound of the first stage of boiling, the Chinese are great lovers of tea ceremonies, are poetically called “wind noise in the pines”),
• slight turbidity, and then "whitening" of the water,
• seething with large bubbles, intense splashing.

When boiling, particles of dirt settle to the bottom of the kettle (or other dishes), salts turn into a precipitate (forming white scale), free chlorine and harmful volatile components disappear along with steam. In the process of boiling, microbes, viruses and pathogens are destroyed.

What happens to water when it is boiled again?

There is a strong opinion that water cannot be boiled a second time. The question arises: why can't you boil water twice? Popular rumor ascribes to the liquid, which was boiled a second time, the properties of heavy hydrogen water (it is unlikely that they understand well what is at stake). The townsfolk scare each other with “dead water”, which is harmful to health, which, in their opinion, is obtained in the process of repeated boiling.

Reference:

• heavy (heavy hydrogen) water has the same chemical formula as ordinary water, with one difference - instead of light hydrogen atoms (protium), it contains heavy hydrogen atoms (deuterium). And heavy water usually looks like a transparent liquid without taste and smell.

• heavy water molecules, discovered by Harold Urey in 1932.

• dogs, mice, rats, and other mammals die when more than 25% of light hydrogen is replaced by heavy hydrogen in their tissues. Animals die after about a week of constant consumption of such water.

• a person (theoretically) can drink two glasses of heavy water without harm to health - deuterium in a few days will be completely excreted by the body.

Obviously, there is something to be afraid of. And the proportion of logic in popular statements is undoubtedly present - after all, together with steam, light hydrogen molecules escape from the liquid, and heavier ones, precipitating, increase the content of deuterium.

But! Academician I.V. Petryanov-Sokolov, somehow calculated how much water must evaporate in order for a dangerous amount of deuterium to precipitate. It turned out that to obtain 1 liter of heavy water, it is necessary to evaporate 2.1 X 1030 tons of ordinary water (this is 300 million times the mass of the Earth!).

So the second and third times the water can be safely boiled. Is it just necessary? Bacteria and viruses have already been killed, and to get boiling water, it is enough to bring the liquid to the state of "whitening" - the second phase of the boiling process.

And it is important to monitor the container in which you boil water - the scale must be cleaned immediately (with lemon, vinegar - there are many practical and proven ways to deal with scale).

As a result, it is the substances that accumulate on the walls of your kettle, turning into a liquid, their thermal decomposition affect the properties of water, and not at all how many times you boil it.

How sometimes it is reluctant to pour out the water left from the previous tea party from the kettle in order to boil a new portion for tea or coffee! And we just put it back on the burner or press the kettle button. Maximum - add water if there is not enough left. Everything is attributed to haste, employment. Especially in offices, where every minute counts and tea parties are almost on the run. But who among us has ever thought: is it not harmful to our health? Can water be boiled multiple times?

What lives in the water?

In order to understand what processes occur with water during boiling, especially when it is boiled again, you need to imagine what composition tap water can have. There are not so few possible "inhabitants" of the domestic aquatic environment:

• Viruses, bacteria, capable of causing various infections. No cleaning and disinfection system can give a 100% guarantee of their complete destruction. Actually, because of them, water is most often boiled before drinking if there is no filter at home. By boiling the water, you can be sure that the harmful "living creatures" will be destroyed.
• Chlorine, which are generously “flavored” with water for disinfection. Chlorine can cause irritation on the skin and mucous membranes (including the oral cavity), and in high concentrations it can contribute to the oncology.
• Salts of magnesium and calcium. It is they who, settling on the walls of the kettle, gradually form the limescale familiar to everyone - an indicator of water hardness.
• Heavy metals (zinc, strontium, lead). Under the influence of high temperature, they form carcinogenic substances, which, as you know, are also capable of provoking tumors.

And this is not a complete list. You can also add sodium salts, nitrogen compounds (nitrates), arsenic here ... How much and what substances are contained in a particular water supply depends on what composition the water had originally, how and with what it was cleaned and disinfected.

Don't pour a full kettle if you know you won't drink it all: it's tempting to just add a little more next time. It is not worth doing this: the already boiling water will not become more useful, and the new one will mix with it. It is better to drain it completely and boil a new one.

Boil Chemistry

What happens in a kettle with water when it is boiled again? Dangerous viruses and bacteria die even at the first - the water is disinfected. It is no coincidence that small children are recommended to use boiled water, because it will not cause infections in the fragile intestines. But metal salts, unfortunately, do not go anywhere. Vice versa. Their concentration increases with each subsequent boiling, because the water evaporates, and its volume gradually decreases. In addition, these substances, when heated, interact with each other, forming various compounds. In particular compounds with chlorine. There are more of them, the more the same water is boiled.

Thus, dioxins and carcinogens are formed that are unsafe for the human body. Of course, for one tea party there will be no harm to health from them. But these substances are quite aggressive and tend to accumulate in the tissues of the body, causing serious diseases. If you use boiled water for several years, such consequences will be noticeable.

If you boil water several times, the concentration of other substances that can lead to the emergence of various forms of oncological tumors also increases. Nitrates form nitrosamines - carcinogenic compounds that provoke cancer of the blood, lymph. Arsenic, in addition, can cause poisoning, neurological abnormalities, infertility, heart disease, sudden pressure surges, and dental disease.

Some substances found in tap water are not harmful in small doses. But as they accumulate, if the water is boiled repeatedly, they become dangerous. For example, calcium salts. Their high concentrations can affect the kidneys, provoke the deposition of stones in them, cause arthritis or arthrosis.

Sodium salts, in particular sodium fluoride, can seriously impair the mental development of children and cause neurological problems. Therefore, you can’t boil water for babies 2 times (or more!)

Be sure to descale the kettle. Substances that form it can even react with water that boils for the first time.

How to be?

Of course, in the absence of a filter, boiled water is much safer in terms of harm than just tap water. But boiling it a second, third time is definitely harmful, since the compounds resulting from chemical reactions that take place when heated can accumulate in our body for years until they “shoot” with one or another disease.

Of course, if one day there was no time to change the water and the person drank “repeated” tea, nothing fatal will happen. But for the reasons stated above, this should not become a system. Yes, and the taste of such coffee or tea will be much worse: with bitterness, a metallic taste.

Therefore, it is better not to succumb to your own laziness, but to change the contents of the teapot completely before each tea party. And if the water is boiled in order to disinfect in the absence of a filter, it is prudent to first defend it for several hours in an open container so that the maximum chlorine vapor evaporates.

Laziness is not the best assistant in the matter of health care. We are reluctant to go in for sports, arrange jogging and even walks, cook for a long time (fortunately, semi-finished products are in every supermarket today - for every taste and budget) ... Let at least repeatedly boiled water not add problems. No wonder she is often called dead.

For many, heat treatment has been and remains the only way to purify water from harmful impurities and microorganisms. Some people, seeking to increase the degree of purification, bring life-giving moisture to a boil two or even three times. Why you can not boil water twice and how it threatens health, we will tell in our article.

Why does the body need water?

Almost everyone knows that the human body is 80% liquid. But few people know that its volume ranges from 30 to 50 liters depending on age: the older the person, the smaller its share.

Water was given the magical power to become the juice of life on Earth. Leonardo da Vinci

Most of the water is contained in the cells: the volume of intracellular fluid is approximately 28 liters. In second place in terms of water content is free liquid - up to 10 liters, followed by blood, intestinal and gastric juices, lymph, cerebrospinal fluid, bile and saliva.

Water, constantly circulating through the body, takes part in all metabolic processes. With its help, toxins, dead cells, viruses and bacteria are removed through sweat and urine. We already wrote "How much water you need to drink to be healthy", so now we will not touch on this issue, but we will focus on why you can not boil water twice.

Why is it said that water cannot be boiled twice?

Boiling is perhaps the only method of water disinfection available to everyone without exception. Many people use it to disinfect tap water, and almost everyone uses it to brew coffee and tea. Sometimes we are too lazy to replace the liquid once brought to 100 ° C with a new one, and then we hear from our mothers that you can't boil water twice. Let's see if this is the case.

How does heat treatment affect the quality of a liquid? Any water, unless, of course, you are dealing with distilled water, in addition to hydrogen and oxygen, contains a lot of impurities, including:

• calcium and magnesium salts, which are deposited on the walls of the kettle during boiling, but do not pose a particular threat to the human body;

• heavy metals: strontium, lead, zinc, capable of forming carcinogen compounds at high temperatures, causing oncological diseases;

• chlorine, which irritates the skin and mucous membranes and provokes the appearance of cancer cells;

• viruses and bacteria, both pathogenic and completely harmless.

During boiling, H 2 O evaporates, but heavy metal salts do not go anywhere, and their concentration in the liquid increases. True, scientists assure that they are still not enough to cause significant harm to the body.

In addition, during heat treatment, “light” hydrogen escapes, but “heavy” (isotopes of hydrogen) remains. Moreover, its density increases, and "living" water turns into a "heavy", saturated with deuterium. Regular use of such water leads to death.

Deuterium (lat. "deuterium", from the Greek. δεύτερος "second") - heavy hydrogen, denoted by the symbols D and ²H, a stable isotope of hydrogen with an atomic mass equal to 2. The nucleus (deuteron) consists of one proton and one neutron. Wikipedia

However, according to studies conducted by academician I. V. Petryanov-Sokolov, to get 1 liter of deadly water, 2163 tons of tap water will be required. In other words, the concentration of deuterium in twice boiled water is so small that it is not worth worrying about.

As a result, of all the consequences of double boiling, the following can be distinguished as harmful:

• change in the taste of the liquid is not for the better;

• “live” water, losing the microorganisms necessary for a person during heat treatment, turns into “dead”, i.e. useless;

• the formation of chlorine-containing carcinogens and an increase in the concentration of heavy metals.

That's why you can't boil water twice, however, and one-time heat treatment leads to the same results.

How to get "living" water?

Not everyone has the opportunity to drink spring water or purify tap water with expensive filters. For them, there is an easy way to get usable life-giving moisture.

Collect water in a jar and, without closing it with a lid, let it stand for a day. During this time, most of the chlorine will evaporate. Then freeze it in the refrigerator (just keep in mind that when freezing, water expands, and the jar, if it is full and closed, may burst), but not completely: let a puddle remain on the surface. This is "dead" water with a high content of deuterium - it turns into ice last. Drain it, after which the ice can be thawed and drunk.

Hear some more advice from a nutritionist who knows how to purify water at home:

Take it, tell your friends!

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