Thread: Heavy Water-Can I drink it?

I'm not that good at Chemistry and was just wondering, if the mass of heavy water is double that of standard water, can I drink it as normal water? Would it quench my thirst more? Its sounds daft but I was just wondering.

Heavy water is only about 10% heavier than water. It is slightly toxic according to the Wikipedia article on heavy water.

Originally Posted by svwillmer

I'm not that good at Chemistry and was just wondering, if the mass of heavy water is double that of standard water, can I drink it as normal water? Would it quench my thirst more? Its sounds daft but I was just wondering.

Yeah, it's not double the mass of standard water, because just the mass of the hydrogen atoms is doubled. It wouldn't kill you to drink it, unless you drank A LOT of it (though I still wouldn't recommend drinking it). It definitely would not quench your thirst any more than regular water.

Since the hydrogen bonding properties of deuterium are slightly different from those of hydrogen, you would surely start to mess up your protein conformations if you drank too much heavy water (along with anything else that depended on hydrogen bonding).