What kind of a person travels to London without an umbrella? A really lucky one, it would seem. There has been no rain since I arrived in London late last Saturday. The city has yet to live up to its drizzly reputation (hope I didn’t just jinx myself). Everything has been rather splendid round here, right down to the mushy peas.
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Lab Life by Anna Kushnir
A discussion and dissection of a most unique workplace environment - the laboratory.
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British Minerals
- Date:
- Tuesday, 26 Aug ust 2008 - 11:15 UTC
Obligatory pub fish and chips, complete with mushy peas – so much better than they sound.The next few days are bound to be a blur as the science blogging conference draws nearer and I run around the London office meeting all those people whose voices I have heard on the phone and whose faces I have squinted at in the Nature Network avatars.
One of the things I have so far discovered about London, is that the Brits sure do like their minerals. The tap water here is so hard – as in, high in multivalent cations such as calcium and bicarbonate. Soap hardly lathers, skin dries out, and toweling is almost superfluous. A bit of Wikipedia-ing reveals that the water in London is generally classified as ‘very hard’, while that in New England (Boston area), is some of the softest in the US. The extent of my reaction to the water here all of a sudden makes sense.
The same high mineral content extends to drinking water – most bottled water sold in stores around London is mineral water, as opposed to the spring water I am most used to. This has sent me on a city-wide hunt for my beloved spring water. I may be a little bit of a princess.
Experimenting with British water. A few striking conclusions made.Mineral water looks like water (obviously), smells like water (ditto), but it doesn’t feel or taste like water in the mouth. The high salt content of mineral water makes it feel heavy, almost like it coats the mouth. I find myself drinking loads but still feeling thirsty. Could this be why, much like many London dwellers, I have been drinking a lot of beer since my arrival?
Beer aside (for the moment), I am curious whether mineral water is as hydrating as spring water. Is my persistent thirst just a consequence of my not being used to the mouth-feel and taste of mineral water, or is mineral water really not as good at quenching thirst as spring water? Is drinking more mineral water a solution to thirst, or will all those salts send my kidneys into overdrive? Should I just stick to the beer? (I won’t be upset if that’s the solution, by the way).
Last updated: Tuesday, 26 Aug 2008 - 11:15 UTC
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Comments
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To see the effects of British minerals on innocent teddy bears and other items, hie on up to Knaresborough
in North Yorkshire. While you’re there, you can also learn about Old Mother Shipton’s prophecies, and find that everything nearby belongs to her. “Mother Shipton’s Tidy Bin”, “Mother Shipton’s Car Park”, etc. A woman attempting to clean the gift shop with an ancient vacuum cleaner exclaimed “I have Old Mother Shipton’s Hoover!”
Definitely one of my favorite post-meeting excursions in the UK.
I’m unsure of the difference, if any, between mineral water and spring water? Don’t both gush from holes in the ground?
Kristi – Very cool! Thanks for the tip. I hope I can make it out there this time.
Henry – Certainly they do both come from the ground, but mineral content of water can vary depending on source, can it not? I am really not sure of the chemistry of spring water, now that you being it up. I am certain that there is a big difference in taste between spring and mineral waters, whatever those labels may mean.
Stick to tap water – London’s is the best in the UK, so they say.
In Cromer the water is so hard that it’s sold in slices. What with your kettle, washing machine and plumbing getting furred up on the inside, and corroded by the salt sea air on the outside, life is certainly hard for robots. Tap water in Norfolk is also very expensive, which is why I collect as much rainwater as possible for gardening and outside uses. Rainwater is much softer than tapwater, but one can’t drink it, and is classified, susprisingly, as raw sewage.
The water here in the Texas Hill Country is very hard also; I have similar problems with furry kettles, plumbing, washing machines, and water heaters. However, the tap water tastes fine and thirst-quenching to me, as it did in London. I prefer fizzy water, so I bought a home carbonator, and that makes the tap water perfect, IMO.
Anna, I hope you can make it up to Yorkshire-it’s beautiful. And if you’re a fan of AS Byatt’s novel Possession, my friends and I devised a tour that includes Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay, as well as sites in London (e.g. Richmond Park).
The water in the south of England is often drawn from chalk aquifiers and many of the rivers are fed in part from springs rising on the chalk uplands. This gives you the large Ca ion concentrations that result in hard water. The North-West and South West of England, plus most of Wales and Scotland, there is less of this calcareous geology and the water is much softer.
I sympathize. After 25 years of soft Scottish water and 3 years of soft-ish Vancouver water, moving to Middle Earth…no Middle England has been quite a shock. Suddenly shampoo no longer foams, clothes from the washing machine can be covered in random inorganic stuff, you get used to it eventually or so they tell me.
It is the scum on the tea that gets me the most. Tea with milk, no scum; tea without milk, the surface of the beverage becomes covered in a flaky scum with metallic sheen. Any suggestions why?
Clearly I have better things to do but a quick glance at the mineral water regulations reveals that no matter how minerally the tap water of London actually is, it is not mineral water. With that supreme bureaucratic ease, it is shown that a mineral water is only a mineral water if it is on the list of official mineral waters. Anything else bottled from an underground source is a spring water.
However, British consumers were not fooled when Coca Cola started to bottle good old London tap water, deionise it and give it the name of Dasani. Sales plummeted once it had been unmasked. However, on trips to the USA I observe that US customers are happy to buy said bottled tap water at a premium price.
The North-West and South West of England, plus most of Wales and Scotland, there is less of this calcareous geology and the water is much softer.
I think it’s something to do with the granite, isn’t it?
Two important inorganic ions in water to look for are nitrate and nitrite. These are due to the oxidation of ammonia by the bacteria that I am working with. Usually they are higher in hard water (provided the water is not sulfurous (or sulphurous if you prefer)). In the US, the concentrations of those ions are not indicated on the label, in the EU they seem to be.
The epidemiology on nitrate in drinking water being bad for you is extremely poor. Adults can likely tolerate hundreds or likely even thousands of ppm nitrate. Salivary glands concentrate nitrate 10x over plasma levels and commensal bacteria on the tongue reduce it to nitrite. Saliva can reach 2 mM/L nitrite after eating a high nitrate meal (lettuce has ~0.2% nitrate).
So when you see someone salivating excessively, their physiology may be trying to increase their NO/NOx levels via nitrate reduction on the tongue.
The quantities of ions required in drinking water to make it less hydrating are quite large, but some what idiosyncratic depending on the strength of one’s kidneys. To calculate that, one would need to measure the osmotic strength of one’s urine and compare that to the drinking water available. Beer tends to be less hydrating because of the diuretic effects of alcohol.
Think I got all these responses out of order. Sorry!
Henry – Does rainwater really have that much bacteria in it? It’s shocking that it’s classified as sewage, though I can see why it would be (lack of controlled purification, etc).
Katherine – No idea on the tea problem. In fact, I am pretty happy that I have yet to encounter it first hand. Sounds thoroughly disturbing.
Kristi – A home carbonator? How utterly cool! I love fizzy water. I find that the fizz hides a lot of the undesirable qualities of ‘mineral’ or tap water for me as well.
Brian – Dasani does do well in the States, but it doesn’t make any claims of being natural or spring water. It does state pretty clearly that the water is purified by reverse osmosis, or whatever else they do to clean it up. I don’t know the reason for it, but ‘mineral’ water (whatever it’s source may actually be) tastes really different from spring water to me.
David – Thanks for the clarification. I am still really curious as to the effects on a person’s excretion system of the higher levels of dissolved salts/ions in the water, but am, err, not really willing to perform lab tests on my own excretions. As luck would have it, the office I currently work in is hardly conducive to performing such tests (much less so than my old lab). Think I will stick to the beer nonetheless :)
The quantities of ions required in drinking water to make it less hydrating are quite large, but some what idiosyncratic depending on the strength of one’s kidneys.
Many people here attribute the increased incidence of kidney stones, most of which are the calcium oxalate variety, to the hard water. However, according to the Mayo Clinic website, it’s just as likely that the increased incidence is related to living in a hot, dry climate, lack of exercise, obesity, diet, and genetic factors.
Anna, you can order a home carbonator here. I have the penguin-shaped one; it’s sold with two glass carafes that you just keep in the fridge, filled with tap water. And it’s Earth-friendly, so I’m all over that like a Drosophila on compost.
I am personally happy with tea from hard or soft water but some people are picky. However, the invisible hand of the market operates in mysterious ways and hard water tea is available.
Anna, I am so homesick just burst into tears at the sight of that fish and chips.
Kristi: Many people here attribute the increased incidence of kidney stones, most of which are the calcium oxalate variety, to the hard water. However, according to the Mayo Clinic website, it’s just as likely that the increased incidence is related to living in a hot, dry climate, lack of exercise, obesity, diet, and genetic factors.
Yeah, Memphis is in the middle of the obesity belt and the kidney stone belt too. I doubt it has much to do with the mineral concentration of the water and more to do with the awful lifestyle of the locals.
I was amazed when I moved to the US at how much soap and shampoo lathered! I thought it was s difference in their make-up, until I noticed my kettle hadn’t furred up after a month or so and thus the funny tasting local water was just Ca2+ & Mg2+ free!
Wow – quite a discussion. I’ll have an extra glass of water for you back home… Or an extra beer to feel closer? Maybe the latter. Have great fun at the conference – can’t wait to read/hear all about it! And, I’m a huge fan of AS Byatt and Possession, so if you make it up to Yorkshire, take lots of pictures :)
Henry – Does rainwater really have that much bacteria in it? It’s shocking that it’s classified as sewage, though I can see why it would be (lack of controlled purification, etc).
I think the problem is not so much the water itself, but the substrates it must traverse before it gets into your rain barrel — roof tiles covered in birdshit, dead things rotting in culverts and so on.
Brian: I am personally happy with tea from hard or soft water but some people are picky. However, the invisible hand of the market operates in mysterious ways and hard water tea is available.
What that link says is true. Yorkshire Tea blended for hard water is a contender here in chalky Cromer, and does taste like proper tea.
Unless you’re an anarchist, of course, for whom all proper tea is theft.By the way, I have just had a nice chat with Anna, face to face, in real time. Funny thing, real life.
Hard water? Pah! In Scunthorpe it was so hard, water pistols were classified as dangerous weapons.
Anna – definitely pop up to Yorkshire. It’s a grand old place. Never mind the water, the beer is worth going for.
We don’t get Yorkshire tea here in Finland, although Taylors do export some of their other brands. I still have a supply, though. Luckily we still have blackboards in the department, so I can get sticks of seasoning.
I second the suggestion to go to Whitby – gorgeous seaside town. York (my main home town – I have several) is also great, and just 2 hours by train from London.
The amount of Ca and Mg in hard water is tiny compared to the amounts in the diet. The association of reduced heart disease in regions of hard water is not replicated by supplementing the diet with Ca and Mg in equivalent amounts.
I suspect that the association is actually due to the bacteria associated with soft water, and the reduction in soap efficiency with hard water. It is an effect of bathing with hard water on skin commensal bacteria, not drinking it.
Now where’s the fun in that?! Who brought real science into this discussion? Deary me. Fetch my dowsing rods…
Sorry, Ian – one last sciencey question. Carbonated water must have a lower pH than regular water, right? From all the CO2? So is it not good for you to drink carbonated water all the time as opposed to regular water? Some effects on tooth enamel, perhaps?
Clearly, Anna, you should only drink carbonated water in areas with hard tap water. That way whatever is removed by the carbonic acid is replaced by the deposits from the tap water.
I think an experiment is in order. I’ll measure the pH of local tap water, carbonated local tap water, bottled water, bottled fizzy water, several soft drinks (diet and regular), and fruit juices. My father has been researching tooth and bone calcification for 30+ years, and his opinion on (non-sugary) carbonated drinks is that they pass through the oral cavity too quickly to wreak much havoc on tooth enamel. Sugary stuff that sticks to teeth in biofilms for prolonged periods is the worst. Dark-colored sodas will stain teeth, just as coffee does, but that’s different than dissolving the enamel.
Of course, bulemics ruin their tooth enamel with stomach acid, but I think the pH is much lower than in carbonated beverages.
Henry – I don’t think they noticed, but that was a truly awful (brilliant) pun.
Having grown up in a hard water area I find that soft water really does not taste right. And it takes 10 mins longer to rinse the soap off in the shower.
When I lived in Saudi, where they use a good deal of ground water, it was also said that the hardness of the water contributed to the frequency of kidney stones. But obesity, poor diet etc were also rife so perhaps that was the real reason.
Unless you’re an anarchist, of course, for whom all proper tea is theft
…wait… I get it! Frank thanks mate!
…wow…HG…seriously mate…genius, but get back on the meds eh?
That’s brilliant, Kristi! An experiment is most certainly in order. I do remember seeing an experiment on TV (so you know it was super scientific) which involved teeth being submerged in various liquids for long periods of time. The teeth submerged in soda/pop/cola/whatever fared very poorly, with the enamel stripped off as badly as it was in the orange juice samples. This is in no way demonstrative of what actually happens, as you mentioned – no one sits with juice in their mouths for hours. At least I don’t. Still, people who consume large amounts of the stuff may be more at risk to tooth damage than occasional consumers. Very curious indeed.
Hate to admit this, but I don’t get the pun. I don’t. I am craving tea and fizzy water all at the same time as a result of this discussion.
I read an article this week (New Scientist, I think) predicting that the rate of kidney stones will shoot up as the climate warms. People not compensating for the higher temperatures by drinking more water was the primary reason though.
That’s really interesting. The water helps rid body of salts, right? I will have to drink lots more water, as eating food with less salt is not an option for me. I love salt too much. Although I don’t love it dissolved in my water, paradoxically enough.
_involved teeth being submerged in various liquids _
Were the teeth still attached to their wearer at this time?
As for the pun, Wikipedia has the answer.
If you like pun-ishment, you should buy my book
Henry, I’d love to see the trails
of slimeof hyperlinks all over this site where you’rewhoringpimpingadvertising your book.Maybe one of the Nature Webgurus can build a wdget to find out for us…
I never knew there was a difference between spring and mineral when it comes to water. I tend to drink our tap water, I hope my kidney is not in any danger
Ian, you should know by now that I have no shame.
Henry…I love you no lie.
When did you say you were in London again, Ian?
I may have to ask for compensation at some point, Henry… since my blog is your ad platform and all.
I think there’s a bug with NN. I’m finding that all hyperlinks go to the same site .
Not helping, Frank.
I’m finding that all hyperlinks go to the same site .
Not all of them, but I’m working on it.
Could this be why, much like many London dwellers, I have been drinking a lot of beer since my arrival?
Oh, that’s the excuse! I see…
In an entirely unscientific way, I’m fairly sure that the reason I prefer Speyside whisky is that I grew up in Speyside, and so was raised on peaty tap water (sometimes it was actually brown). That’s my excuse anyway…
By the way, Anna, after a nice few days it has been pelting down for most of the day today (Sunday). You would certainly have needed that umbrella!
It was a great conference, well done for all the work you put in. I enjoyed it a lot (apart from the parts where I was terrified.) Thanks again.
Great combination of the scientist-Anna and the food lover-Anna!!!
Do you know whether mineral water is used for the fish batter? I know about beer or salsa water, but amy be mineral water too.
Enjoy your British stay along the food and of course, the beer!
mehdi
Scott – Can I take a rain check on the vodka? My limit of one bottle a night (slight exaggeration) was almost breached by the time you came by with your kind offer.
apart from the parts where I was terrified
You and me both, Maxine! I wish I had relaxed a bit more during the conference, but I still thought it was great fun. Nothing like the steep, fuscia wall of seats in the Faraday Theatre to strain one’s nerves. It’s almost like it was built for instilling fear – beautiful, but terrifying.
Mehdi – I am assuming that regular tap water was used for preparing the food. I guess that would make it more mineral rich than normal. Maybe that’s the key to making English fish and chips inimitable – it’s all in the water!
Eww, mushed peas. Actually I want to try them after seeing the photo.
I’ve lived in an area with very hard water most of my life. Maybe that’s why I still feel thirsty after drinking lots of water sometimes? I’ve never really noticed one type of water tasting better to me though. I’ve heard of water that is high in salt content causing high blood pressure.
As a sometime beer brewer, I’ve learned that the mineral content of local water supplies can greatly affect how the end product will taste. That’s why some beer recipes call for adding various minerals (gypsum is common) – it’s an attempt to recreate some of these local water supplies. Burton-on-Trent in England is one area that is frequently mentioned as having very distinctive water due to the large amounts of dissolved salts.
I’ve also heard theories about the hard water in Texas making it impossible to make pizza crusts, bagels or pasta comparable to what can be found in New York, although I haven’t seen anyone prove this with actual data. Sounds plausible considering the quality of those items here though!
In an unrelated note, I like how they say “aluminium” in Britain.
For anyone (i) still reading and (ii) not totally bored by bottled water mineral content, there is an exhaustive (really) study measuring the ion [ ] s and comparing them to (US) tap water here (PubMed with link to free full text).
Water drinking and other stuff to do with water is one of those subjects we BadScience folks talk about a lot – see e.g. some of my own efforts here – mainly because there is so much tripe talked about water / ions / pH / hydration by the Alt.Reality / alternative medicine folks. The dissolved ions obviously will have some taste effect (hence water can have a notable taste), but if the ion content is less the effect is obviously more muted.
And re. the pH, stomach acid is lowest (most acid), though Coke straight from the can would run it pretty close. Carbonated fizzy water is less acid than Coke, though still pretty acid (pH 4-5). It gets less acid on standing as the dissolved CO2 is gradually lost to the air.
The most famous scientific London tap water story is the one about Sydney Ringer (“Ringer’s Solution”) discovering in the 1880s that dissolved [Ca] was necessary for the heart to beat. Ringer made his solutions with distilled water and his hearts wouldn’t beat; his technician made up solutions with London eau de Tap and his hearts did… and the rest is history. More of the story here
I love that Ringer’s story. My PhD mentor was big on the history of science…
…just a note to our American cousins, they’re “Mushy Peas”, not “Mushed Peas”.
tsk tsk!
Austin – Thanks so much for the comment. I am glad that the PubMed article you linked to supported my suspicions – “European bottled waters generally contained higher mineral levels than North American tap water sources and North American bottled waters.” Whether or not that has an effect on one’s health is a different matter.
The acidity of Coke is well known to hover somewhere near lethal. While I suspected that fizzy water was pretty acidic as well, I actually didn’t know that it was that bad. Is there any info on whether drinking tons of the fizzy stuff is bad for you, based on pH alone? Setting aside all the other insane chemicals in Coke for the moment.
I haven’t come across anything specific about fizzy stuff, but the only thing I might be slightly nervous about was the effect of the acid on my tooth enamel if I swilled fizzy mineral water all day. I guess we already know Coke rots your teeth. But with Coke it is [acid in the drink + sticky sugar stuck to your teeth feeding bacteria in your dental plaque which make more acid for the next 2 hrs], so double or even triple whammy.
[Of course, the main focus of health worries about soft drinks these days seems to be the enormous sugar load and the association of heavy consumption with obesity]
I wouldn’t expect the extra acid in the carbonated drinks to do anything to your body pH. First off, the dissolved CO2 will not make any difference because it will still be tiny amounts compared to the huge quantities of CO2 your body generates through aerobic respiration in all your cells, and breathes out through your lungs. You would only have to breathe the tiniest bit quicker / deeper to vent any extra CO2 that chugging the drink put into you.
Second, although Coke is acidic even without the CO2, it probably won’t have THAT much “fixed acid buffering power” (i.e. the [ ] of non-CO2 acids like phosphoric acid will be pretty low), so your body won’t be bothered. Remember that we are 40+ litres of heavily buffered saline solution (total effective buffering power probably of the order of 70 mM / pH units, i.e. you would have to add about 70 mMoles total of H+ to a litre of body fluid to shift the pH by one pH unit, or 7 mMoles to reduce it 0.1 pH unit). And even if something does shift body pH acid (like generating lots of lactic acid when you run) then you can excrete any excess “non volatile” acid through the kidney.
If I could find the real concentrations of non-CO2 acid(s) in Coke I could actually run some ballpark numbers…. or maybe someone’s done it already. Might make a good student exercise. Or maybe I could set a student the project of working out how to make a teaching class out of it. I did once have the idea of trying to teach body acid-base balance concepts using a big bottle of fizzy mineral water, but it never moved beyond the “half drunken idea” stage.
I don’t remember reading any actual studies of things relating to the above – most of this is standard Physiology 101 – but a while back when we were thinking about this my other half and I thought of a kind of indirect test. She used to be a renal doc in a former life, and there are people who have genetic or other defects of kidney acid secretion (“renal tubular acidosis”). These people would, you would think, be the ones who would have to watch their “total acid intake”, if anyone would. Anyway, while some of these patients do have to take bicarbonate to help keep their pH homeostasis on track, she had never heard of them being advised to eat special diets so as to avoid “acid foods” (another of the nonsense ideas the Alt Med folks peddle).
Take home message: unless your body’s homeostasis is compromised in some drastic way, it can cope with a bit of extra acid without problems, and I think that includes a load of fizzy drinks!
Whoops, sorry Ian, that was me. Mush*y* peas, mush*y* peas. I guess I’m used to mash*ed* potatoes.