It's well-known that people are mainly made up of water.
With out drinking water our blood would not be in a position to flow and our bodies wouldn't be capable of getting rid of waste materials and we would actually end up poisoning ourselves.
The important thing to keep in mind is that it is that you need to drink clean water.
You do not want to introduce a range of impurities that could be hazardous to your health in an attempt to get water into your body as this will make you dehydrate even more! This is where things such as reverse osmosis come in handy.
Reverse osmosis is really a process that is used in the purification of water.
It's used to get as many heavy particles out of the water as possible.
Osmosis is a process by which water moves from a higher concentration of water molecules to a lower concentration of water molecules until the system is in balance.
Reverse osmosis is the precise opposite, therefore the term "reverse".
A system which makes usage of reverse osmosis to cleanse water will use pressure on the side of the lower concentration of water molecules to force the water molecules to escape via a semi-permeable membrane layer to a higher concentration of water molecules.
This then separates the water from the harmful particles that you do not want in the water as the membrane layer doesn't allow them through.
This is not the actual be all and end all of water purification though.
Reverse osmosis can only do so much as only a specific amount of pressure could be withstood by the membranes employed in the process.
It will do a very good job though.
This procedure is usually used to remove contaminants such as salt and other heavy metals from the water that is being purified.
Some heavy metals are harmful to our bodies if taken in sufficient amounts and so need to be removed from the water.
It does not work against contaminants that are smaller than the water molecules though so things like germs and pesticides may still be in the water after is has passed through this sort of process.
That is why a water refinement plant is such a sizable and intricate beast.
The purpose of it all is to produce drinking water that's as pure as possible.
It's not possible for mankind to produce water as pure as that which flows from the source of a glacial spring, however we are able to d a pretty good job with all the technologies as well as science at our fingertips.
It's a good idea to check on the purity of water in a foreign country before you drink from the faucets there although, just in case there are things in there that your body does not understand how to handle and may make your stomach upset.
If you are not certain then its usually safer to consume water in bottles that has been through a more stringent purification process compared to water in the taps.