I have received delivery of my long-delayed CPAP machine, and this afternoon I will have a consultation to learn how to use it. As part of its operation, I am required to pour in some distilled water. There is something of a humidifier element to the machine that provides moisturized air through the tube and mask so you don’t dry out your nasal passages and your throat (very important when you have to talk for several hours a day to make a living). By my count, this will now be the FIFTH type of water that I am paying for.
Like pretty much everyone, I already pay for municipal water service. The city of Oshkosh provides to me at multiple outlets in my home water that is fit for consumption, cooking, washing, and returning my bodily waste back to the utility to be returned to nature. The water is locally sourced from Lake Winnebago, treated, fluoridated, tested regularly, and monitored continuously. And yet, that is not good enough for me–or my machines.
My refrigerator features a water and ice dispenser in the door. Water that passes through the dispenser must first pass through a filter that hides behind another door on the inside of the fridge. That filter removes “impurities” before going into our water dispenser or into the icemaker. But, that filter only works for six months. And, thanks to an RFID chip stuck to the filter, my refrigerator knows when it has been six months–and it stops dispensing any water until I shell out money to buy and install a new six-month filter. So I pay semi-annually for my fridge to give me water that I have already purchased from the city.
Not far from that filter and the water dispenser are several bottles of “purified” water. Those are for when we travel and need to bring water along with us. Now mind you, where we go usually has potable water available. And our home is full of vessels to carry the water we purchase from the city–which we further pay to filter in our refrigerator–to wherever we may go. But bottled water is still the preferred choice. So a couple of times a year I join the rest of my fellow Costco shoppers in leaving the store with dozens of bottles of water in giant, awkward, plastic shrink-wrapped packs. This is where I should point out that the “purified” water we purchase in those bottles is not from some magical mountain stream–but is rather purchased by a bottling company from a municipal water system–filtered slightly–and then re-sold at a huge margin.
Adjacent to the purified water, you will find a few bottles of “Lightly Flavored Water”. This is for the times when a couple swigs of regular “purified” water we have already purchased in bottles–or filtered municipal water we paid for twice–just won’t satisfy your thirst like water that tastes like you put it into a cup that had previously contained some cherry or grape Kool-Aid.
And now joining all of those other waters will be a jug of distilled water–because the trace minerals still present in municipal tap water will somehow gum up the works of my CPAP machine over time. In checking out on-line videos on cleaning my mask and hose I was greatly relieved to learn that you can use the water from your sink and your tub for the job, and that you don’t need to use special seawater collected from a specific five-mile patch of the South Pacific Ocean.
