rain water

The rainwater will sop up whatever crap is on you roof and gutters when it runs down into the barrel you collect it in.
 
My dad who was a pretty sharp scientist in his lifetime would was his car when it was raining. He said rain water was de ionized leading to no water spots. Of course we didn't live in an area with acid rain. I have no independent verification of his de ionization claim but he had a masters in chemistry and worked at Oak Ridge after the war so I feel confidence in his claim.
 
While it is true that rainwater was once vapor and was distilled so to speak, it picks up any material in the air and on the surfaces it lands on, so it contains contaminates. Not as much as well water or water from a river. The only water to use in your battery is distilled water from the supermarket.

Regarding washing your car. You can use a filter that removes the hard water minerals in tap water. I use cleaner wax on my car unless it is extremely dirty (mud and grime from the road). Usually it is just dusty.
 
In a perfect world, rain water would still pick up natural particles in the atmosphere as it condenses and drops out. We get dirt in the atmosphere that is blown all the way across the atlantic ocean from winds in Africa every summer. If a volcano is active then sulfurous particles will be in the atmosphere. These are natural but auto exhaust and industrial exhaust are man made.

Most of the old steel manufacturers that used to be in the mid west are disbursed around the country now and use different methods to make the stuff than they did in the past. Auto emissions are a lot cleaner now that they have ever been so the rain in the mid west is likely not near as acidic as it once was. It's the salt on the roads in the winter that still eats up car bodies. All I see from atomized coal slurry fired power plants in the modern era is steam vapor coming up from the condensers. The carbon black plants all moved to China and India so folks don't see much black smoke coming from industrial sources now days. I would say that rain water is still drinkable but it ain't like distilled water where most contaminanis are removed. Distilling water depends on the source water. Some compounds will vaporize along with the water so there is always something left. Reverse osmosis is the only way to remove most all contaminants and be affordable. This will remove lead, mercury, & uranium as well as many other contaminants.
 
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I have a very simple standard for "adding water" to the radiator: "If I would't drink it, it's not going in the radiator and block!"
 
Saw a news post just this week, a Norwegian scientist reported that rain water WORLD WIDE is now unsafe to drink due to atmospheric pollution. I guess we are slowly killing our planet.
 
Distilled water is cheap. It's cleaner than rain water and we all
want anything but the best for your baby.:)
 
I get a pint to a gallon of distilled water every day out of my dehumidifier in the cellar during the summer months. Dry as a bone all winter so I save some of it in clean milk jugs.
 
Ray in La Mesa said:
Saw a news post just this week, a Norwegian scientist reported that rain water WORLD WIDE is now unsafe to drink due to atmospheric pollution. I guess we are slowly killing our planet.
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Boy! That's good news ! That bear that came wandering down my driveway won't be around much longer! And the deer that come to ravage our vegetables, And those damn groundhogs! Not to mention the turkeys and the crows. Hah! take that you miserable, thievin' critters! There is nothing more exaggerated than the claims of a climate scientist on what soon gonna happen to us all.
Sorry ! I'm 78 y.o. and I grew up in the one of the most polluted areas in the world, Essex Co. , New Jersey. What's often overlooked is how much we have cleaned up the environment. Want some fun? Try driving through the Hudson or Lincoln tunnels in a traffic jam, only you're stuck behind a bus that has needed a ring job for the last hundred thousand miles! You're ready for an iron lung when you get done with those last 3 miles. There's a lot more but Essex co's. air is almost pristine to day, completely recovered! Same is true of California's smog, or the London smog problem in 1952, where hundreds died from burning coal. But we haven't killed the planet yet and we're a lot further from killing it today than 60 or 70 years ago.
Terry
 
When my Pop was in his teens, a company built a carbon black plant about 20 miles south of the old farm his family called home. The newly opened up Hugoton gas field supplied fuel. They had a big black cloud come over the house anytime the wind blew up from the south east which is near every other day in southwest Kansas. Even the word Kansa means "the south wind people" in that tribes native dialect.

The air quality was bad clear up till the plant closed after WWII. The plant was still black as coal many years after it was shut down.

Mankind is still slowly using up resources that were deposited millions to billions of years ago. God willing we will find the way to perpetual energy sources like our star provides but we're not there yet.

This planet had an unbreathable atmosphere for a good part of it's existence and has been both a ball of ice and had tropical rain forests during various climate change periods and this was all long before we showed up. Mother nature could shake us off like a dog shakes off fleas any time it wants to. I think humans have a mighty big ego if they think they can kill it. We can certainly kill ourselves off but old mother earth will still be here. Atomic radiation has a long half life but that number doesn't compare to how long the earth has already been around.
 
I remember in Charlotte at a continuing education class the speaker was talking about acid rain in N/W Nc. He said it was caused by TVA, Tennessee Power. They either have to upfit their equipment or purchase from the government certificates that cover the amount of pollutions they put in the air, guess which is cheaper? That was over 25 years ago so maybe something has been done??

I trust almost nothing from the .gov, tv, news but I do believe that is probably true.
 
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