What Happens to Your Body if You Drink Heavy Water?

What is heavy water, and is it safe to drink? Heavy water, or deuterium oxide, has some pretty important scientific applications. But what would happen to your body if you actually drank it? Hosted by Hank Green.

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[murilovsilva]

So the list of the most expensive waters would go like this:
1-Normal water
2-Heavy water
3-Super heavy water
4-Bottled tap water at a pop music festival
5-Water at the airport

[DroolingLizard]

I'm a nutritionist and drank heavy water once in school for one of the experiments Hank briefly mentioned. Just one of the most expensive and awesome ways of measuring a person's total energy expenditure. Heavy water tasted, looked and felt exactly like regular water as far as I could tell.

[birbeyboop]

I just drink pure liquid oxygen for maximum chemical reaction speed

[since]

I feel like a super, super high end bar could totally sell drinks with D2O ice cubes for a ton of money just for the silly novelty of the ice cube sinking

[geppettocollodi]

Is heavy water actually more expensive that the bottled water at the Airport?

[Psara]

Thank you for doing this one. I’ve spent hours trying to look up what would have really happened to the Penguin’s dehydrated guinea pigs in the Batman movie, but never got past “they would die.”

[Jackal]

this sounds like a stoner question
and my suspicion is confirmed when I see the length of the video is 4:20
lol

[ANewHopeIsHere]

"You dont wanna be a dead person."

YOU DONT KNOW MY LIFE SCISHOW

[AJ-luwx]

..."keeps you not dead"..That was the bestest scientific jargon...really..thanks :)

[ThePeterDislikeShow]

I've always learned it's not so much the heavy water being toxic it's the lack of normal water that might hurt you. So you'd need to replace pretty much all your water intake with it.

[wattsisnaim]

Holy cow, this was something they had Hogan's Heros!

[eckligt]

Folks are assuming that heavy water is D2O (Di-Deuterium Oxide), but in reality most of it will be DHO, that is only one regular Hydrogen atom will be swapped out for a Deuterium atom. Then, as someone else has pointed out, there is also the possibility of making heavy water by going to a heavier isotope of Oxygen. All three atoms can have extra neutrons added, making for many possibilities. But most of the time, heavy water is DHO.

[yourrightimsooosorry]

Super heavy water you say? Humm, hold my beer! Challenge excepted!

[rkpetry]

Actually, almost instantaneously on contact (unless it's frozen) the heavy-water will share its deuterons with ambient normal (light) water-etc., producing semi-heavy-water-etc....

[jackyzhu]

SciShow is like Super Planet Dolan in 2 ways, Patreon and answers to questions.

[JTSonorous]

If it slows chemical reactions down, would it be more effective at stopping fires than regular old h2o?

[csdn]

Couple things Hank, H1 is sometime referred to as Protium just as H2 is referred to as Deuterium and H3 is referred to as Tritium.

Also, Di-Tritium Oxide is really bad.

The worst types of radiative isotopes to have internally are Beta and Alpha emitters, especially Alphas. As someone who has a degree in Nuclear Engineering, we were always taught when it comes to radiation that is are external sources of alphas or betas weren't as worrisome as external sources of gammas and neutrons because the top layer of skin will stop alphas and depending on how energetic the betas were, they'd likely be stopped in the upper layers of skin (although high energy betas could penetrate deeper) where as gammas and neutrons would likely interact multiple times at various depths in the body as they pass through you. Been when you reverse it, where the sources are internal, Alpha and Beta emitters are far worse because they will lose all their energy internally to the human body and gamma and neutron emitters aren't as bad as they will quickly exit the body without depositing much energy.

So, TLDR for radioactive sources, Alphas and Betas outside the body, not an issue normally, Alphas and Betas inside the body, really, really bad.

[Jarsia]

Always one of my pet peeves in Star Trek when they talk about deuterium like it's arsenic or something

[trishaleehutchison]

I’ve been wondering this too! There’s an episode of Hogan’s heroes wherein they trick the commandant to drink it so it can’t be delivered to Berlin.

[KingsleyIII]

Can there be water made from a non-"normal" isotope of oxygen? Like, if it was made from two "normal" hydrogen atoms that have no neutrons, and an oxygen atom that has nine neutrons instead of eight?