I'm looking for more info on a topic that a friend of mine turned me onto... Something called disease markers in our drinking water. Anyone heard of this?

It goes something like this...

Water is perpetual on Earth, and although it takes many forms, it is never really destroyed, just recycled over and over and over again. Based on that supposition, the glass of water that you drank at lunch today was the same water that some dinosaur drank millions of years ago and then peed out and that countless other people and animals have used for cooking, bathing etc...

Now for the science...

Water properties change through processes of heating and cooling, which changes the molecular bond structure of the water. Example: Heating water causes it to become steam or evaporate into clouds, whereas cooling water causes it condensate or freeze. This repeated heating and cooling, in conjunction with pollution causes the Hydrogen bond angles to break down, thus making it more susceptible to carrying disease markers. Currently global measures of the Hydrogen bond angle of ordinary H2O is about 104.4 degrees, with distilled water being the worst at 101 degrees. From what I have read, healthy bond angles should be about 114 degrees in order to not attach to disease markers and make it easier for the water to pass through our cell membranes.

The theory states that the widened bond angles allow for disease markers to attach to the individual water molecules and will prevent said molecule from passing through our cell membranes. As a result, the disease markers become trapped in our bodies breeding diseases such as cancer and the like. As the water is recycled, the disease markers it picks up along the way stay with it infecting other people and animals.

Well, that's it. That's all I know on the subject and I haven't been able to locate any other material on this. Has anyone ever heard of this? Have links to info about it? Is this and old wive's tale or is their scientific or medical merit to this? I'm curious. Thanks in advance.

I have never heard of this theory before, it seems very interesting if true. However, I dont find much merit of bond angle changing as the atoms are recycled. A hydrogen is a hydrogen is a hydrogen atom and the same goes for oxygen unless we are talking about isotopes. I suppose a O16 vs a O18 might have a different bond angle with hydrogen. First lets look at this.

The bond in water is the relatively weak hydrogen bond, the atom is so small it has problems hanging on to things. The bond angle is created by the repulsive/attactive forces between the hydrogen atoms. I dont see how pollution can change this angle. However O16/18 have different atomic weight ratios so I would assume that changes the repulsion/attraction force and thus the angle. Maybe someone in chemistry can quantify this relationship, I am a mere Geophysicist.

Now when ice forms it would rather take in O16 I believe, so the concentration of O18 in the environment increases during say Ice Ages.

I would like to see more info on this theory. Every compound is impure, water carries calcium, sulfur, carbon etc. but the environment filters this out through the water cycle. I have no doubt contaminates in the water are increasing, but I dont know if bond angle plays into this.

I have no doubt of this with all that we have polluted the planet. Oh well, time to fill the office water cooler with vodka.

I've been trying like heck to find out more about this stuff but cannot seem to locate any evidence of this. The only thing I have succeeded in finding were ads for machines that supposedly correct this problem, although they never describe how nor do they provide any details on what is going on here.

Now, I'm no scientist, not even a geophysicist, so maybe some of the info my buddy told me didn't make it correctly through my translation into this post. That's why I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this.

I have heard this same shctik from a water purification salesman a while back. he claimed that his product could purify the water of its disease markers and that one cup of the super pure water could purify a gallon of regular water. Total bunk used to sell water purification systems. Impurities would have to be carrried on the subatomic level in order to avoid distillation as water is evaporated and then condensed in the air. The real question is what are these disease markers made of. Diseases are spread by virus or bacteria. I will completely discount bacteria as a disease marker because the millions of molecules that make up the organism are much to large to have an effect on the water molecule, which is one of the smallest molecules out there short of base gaseous elements and their static forms. You have the same problem with viruses, though they are smaller in size they are still huge compared to a water molecule. Even the protien markers that viruses use to key in on certain celular structures and processes are molecularly huge compared to a 2 element molecule like H20. Now an argument could be made that water picks up diseases and impurites from the air as it condences into solution as rain but to say that water carries disease markers on the molecular level through the distillation process is pure science fiction.

[edit on 24-6-2004 by Johannmon]

I see now... this is one of those nefarious scare campaigns in an attempt to create some false "awareness" that leads to one purchasing a product that "cures or solves" the problem. Hmmmmm, that's very cunning. I'll have to ask my buddy a.) was he approached by someone selling water purification systems and b.) was he snookered by this somebody out of his hard earned money?

Is there anything to the "bond angle" nonsense and our body's ability to absorb the water through our cell membranes? I think Zsandmann said something that debunked that too, I'll have to check the thread. Thanks all.

Thanks so much iwouldificould! I haven't been able to locate much data on the subject... which leads me to believe that they are hiding something. Based on the info in some of these links that you sent me, they are definitely hiding something... alot of somethings, in fact. Why is there not more being done about this?

If the Earth was an organism unto itself, and we, along with the plants and animals are parasites and virus living off the host, then our water would be like the organism's blood. Along that vein, Earth is dying of Leukemia. And if the Earth dies, we all go right along with it. Shouldn't we be doing more?