Anti-ageing water from your tap

"Alkaline and hydrogen-rich" water is being touted as the latest cure-all.

There is a sort of health shop in the Johnsonville Mall on the outside of which is this handsome sign:

Which is intriguing. How can water with extra hydrogen be alkaline? Hydrogen does not dissolve readily in water so the extra hydrogen can only be in the form of hydrogen ions, (H+aq) which would lower the pH and make it acidic. (It is possible that the "extra hydrogen" would be in the form of deuterium or tritium, which would increase the molar mass a bit, but that would make it radioactive.)

But further, how are they going to make it alkaline without adding something like sodium bicarbonate which would make it taste bitter?

It is unclear what the "anti-oxidant" properties are. Presumably the word is added because anti-oxidants are fashionable. Anti-oxidants entered the nutritional vocabulary in the 1990s and are said to remove free radicals produced by cell metabolism with oxygen. They are mainly vitamins (E and C) but there is the suggestion that magnesium salts can perform the function. There is little evidence that taking vitamin and mineral supplements do anything health-wise at all.

The sign highlights that the water is "anti-ageing" and I guess this is true. If one stops drinking sufficient water, the ageing process will accelerate dramatically. But some do say that ageing is accelerated by free radicals which brings us back to the question of what are the anti-oxidant properties?

What makes it truly miraculous is that somehow the water molecules are stopped from "clumping" which makes it easier to be absorbed in the gut. The only small problem with this is that water is only water because of the hydrogen bonding between the molecules. If you interfere with this, as can be done by adding ethanol, then the boiling point decreases - the alcohol molecules get between the water molecules and interfere with the 'clumping'. (This is only by a couple of degrees so do not worry that your whisky is going to boil if you add water.( If the weak bonding between the water molecules were removed altogether, the water would instantly vaporise and boil at room temperature. Which would be a little disconcerting if one were trying to drink it.

One can view their promotional video on www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR76bX4UASk And the very first thing they do is "remove chemicals" - by filtration. Obviously they don't classify water as a chemical. The filtration also removes bacteria. And it gets rid of chlorine with activated charcoal, which could be scientifically valid, if it really does so. And in any case, the water is only chlorinated in order to kill off the bacteria which the filtration system is meant to deal with. The water is then "mineralised" and made more alkaline before passing through the "ion exchange resin" which "balances calcium and magnesium levels" (whatever that means( to give the water a softer more pleasant taste. There is no justification in terms of adding magnesium salt as an anti-oxidant.

The dialogue then descends into what can only be described as gobbledegook about mineral springs where "activated hydrogen" reacts with "activated oxygen" to produce harmless water and somehow, when you drink this it "removes harmful free radicals from the body". They don't explain either what they mean, or how it occurs.

Finally it is aerated and then passed over a magnetic field. No explanation is given as to why this produces "healthy" water, other than to say this is what happens in nature with water being affected by the Earth's magnetic field.

What is really depressing is that people must be taken in by this fanciful nonsense masquerading as "a breakthrough in Science". If people were not taken in and buying the product, then Hexagon wouldn't be selling it. And if they weren't selling it they wouldn't be promoting it.

It is depressing because every New Zealander has taken science at least up to Year 10 and most of them beyond that. One would have hoped that no one who has been through the secondary school science curriculum would be taken in by such a promotion.

Yet people still believe in homeopathy, iridology, and Young Earth Creationism. They classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and think that carbon emissions are the smoke coming off industrial chimneys and sooty car exhausts.

On viewing the Youtube video I noticed there are a whole host of videos suggesting that alkaline water of pH 9.5 is best for health and can be purchased in Health Food Stores. And that you can make your own by adding lemon juice to warm water. Excuse me? Lemon juice makes water alkaline? Lemon juice has a pH of 2. Yet presumably people believe this pseudoscience. In most schools, Year 10 students will test the pH of a variety of substances, vinegar, saliva, tap water, soap, sodium bicarbonate and so on. Lemon juice is always acidic.

But I guess as science teachers we can only keep on trying.