Purified Water for Babies – The Many Advantages of Drinking Purified Water
Purified water is the water that has been purified to remove impurities like chemicals, contaminants, and bacteria. Using purified water for drinking has many advantages. Let’s have a closer look at some key advantages of using purified water for babies.
Protection from concerns regarding fluoride
Purified water is free from dangerous fluoride content. No doubt your body needs fluoride, but with babies, the situation is a little different. They do not require fluoride in high amount. More importantly, it is already present in their formula. Most powdered infant formulas contain fluoride. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends parents not to use water that has added fluoride as the extra fluoride is not necessary and may lead to dental fluorosis.
The American Dental Association (ADA) has also issued concerns about using water that contains heavy concentrations of fluoride for preparing baby formula. Higher levels of fluoride can cause enamel or dental fluorosis. It is not a tooth disease but can result in discoloration on your baby’s developing teeth or white lines on teeth. Also, this imperfection of coloration develops on your baby’s permanent teeth while they are still forming in the gums. So, using purified distilled water ensures the protection of babies against fluoride diseases.
Avoid infections
Despite getting purified at the treatment plant, your tap water may still contain many bacteria, microorganisms, and harmful chemical that can cause serious harm to your baby’s health. More importantly, there are many chemicals that cannot be removed by simple boiling. This regular tap water or well water may be good enough for you after boiling as you have developed the immune system, but it can be dangerous for your baby because his or her immune system is still developing. And these harmful chemicals can cause many potential risks to your baby’s health. Whereas, purified water for babies is purified using distillation process and packed directly into sterilized bottles. So, there is no chance of bacteria, microorganism, or any chemicals entering into the water. It protects your baby from infection.
Eliminate risks of mineral overdose
Another major concern of using regular supply water for baby formula is it may lead to the mineral overdose as many minerals are added intentionally in supply water in order to make it better for public use, but the same is not true for the babies. Their formula already contains enough amounts of minerals. That’s why water purified using distillation method is considered as the ideal for making baby formula.
Distilled water is the purest form of water as it is free from contaminants like bacteria, viruses, protozoa like giardia, and chemicals like lead and sulfate, and has 99.9% minerals removed from it. It may not be ideal for adults to drink unless they have a special condition, but ideal for making baby’s feed.
Avoid lead contamination
According to Environmental Protection Agency, you should never mix baby formula using hot water from the tap because many homes have plumbing with lead or lead solder, and hot water can dissolve the lead, which may result in lead poisoning. When you use purified water for formula preparation, you get it covered too. Before each bottle is filled, it enters an enclosed chamber to receive a sanitizing ozone rinse, and then the purified water used to fill the bottles is filled after passes through a UV filter. There is no chance of any type of contamination.
So, these are the four key advantages of drinking purified water for babies and using purified water for making baby’s feed. Apart from this, using purified water for babies also gives you the peace of mind that your baby is well protected against harmful infections.