'Very, very pink' tap water in Alberta town

A lot of the posts here seem to be missing something important: permanganate is an EXTREMELY vividly colored ion in solution. The bright colors of the water in the pictures is about in line with what a 20 ppm permanganate solution looks like. Considering manganese is an essential trace mineral (although it is neurotoxic above a certain point, the amounts in the water are minimal), I doubt there is any real toxic effect caused by drinking the water. Permanganate is a very strong oxidizer, but it is not much stronger than the commonly used chlorine and chlorine dioxide to be of concern (and it&#x27;s weaker than ozone anyways).<p>The whole reason permanganate is added in the first place is twofold: it oxidizes simple organics all the way to carbon dioxide (think nail polish remover, denatured alcohol), and it oxidizes soluble ferrous iron to insoluble ferric iron. The byproduct of the oxidation, manganese dioxide, is insoluble and if balanced correctly the treatment does not increase manganese levels in the water.

I love potassium permanganate. Growing up in Soviet Union, we used to add potassium permanganate to bath, supposedly to clean your skin. But I love it for its oxidizing properties. Mix potassium permanganate with magnesium shavings, and you have a pretty powerful explosive mixture. Put a drop or two of glycerine into potassium permanganate and glycerine spontaneously burns. There are tons of interesting experiments you could do with potassium permanganate... So many wonderful memories...

We used to gargle water mixed with potassium permanganate as children after cleaning our teeth to see if we did a good enough job. It would colour plaque pink, so it was very obvious if you hadn&#x27;t cleaned properly!

Not the end of the world. You can buy potassium permanganate tablets to purify drinking water.

Almost completely unrelated, except for the pink water bit: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theage.com.au&#x2F;victoria&#x2F;lake-in-melbournes-westgate-park-turns-bright-pink-20170308-gutp26.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theage.com.au&#x2F;victoria&#x2F;lake-in-melbournes-westgat...</a>

Not a big deal. But it does underline the need to trust public water systems. Worse mistakes have been made.

At least it&#x27;s not phenolphthalein -- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;compound&#x2F;phenolphthalein" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;compound&#x2F;phenolphthalein</a>

&quot;She said the water is clear coming out of her cold water taps, but not the hot water taps.&quot;<p>Do people really not know where their hot water comes from?

&gt; “Could the town have done a better job of communicating what was going on yesterday to our community? Absolutely, without a doubt,”<p>This must be from Zootopia =))

Am I the only one thinking about the slime river under NYC in Ghostbuster 2 ?<p>Same colour, but not the same texture

It&#x27;s because of the electrolytes. It has electrolytes in it, which is good.

I have always wanted to buy a countertop water distiller for home use. Guess I found another reason to justify the purchase =)

Yikes! Apparently its been used (Vaginally) to cause abortions... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Potassium_permanganate#Other_uses" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Potassium_permanganate#Other_u...</a>

It will regulate itself, as always. Right? Right?!?

Have you seen the other articles on this site? It should be called dailymisery.com. Who reads trash like this?

If they did it for International Women&#x27;s Day they were a little early.