“Real Water” that poisoned dozens contained chemical from rocket fuel

A jury this week awarded $228.5 million to seven plaintiffs in their case against Nevada-based water company Real Water, which sold alkaline water tainted with hydrazine, a highly toxic chemical found in fuel for rockets and spacecraft. The plaintiffs included a 7-month-old boy who was hospitalized with severe liver failure and nearly needed a liver transplant. Another was a 69-year-old woman who was hospitalized for liver failure after drinking the water for years. She died in the hospital on November 11, 2020. They are among around a hundred people who say they have suffered acute liver toxicity and failure from the water and have filed lawsuits against Real Water, according to attorney Will Kemp. In an interview Friday, Kemp told Ars he represents a little over 60 of the plaintiffs, including the seven in the case that received a jury verdict this week. It was the first case to go to trial. Jurors for the case in the 8th Judicial District Court in Clark County, Nevada, found Real Water liable for $200 million in punitive damages and $28.5 million in compensatory damages. Two other defendants, Hanna Instruments and Milwaukee Instruments, which were alleged to have made faulty water testing meters that contributed to Real Water's toxicity, were also found liable for compensatory damages but not punitive damages. "We're hoping that the punitive award sends a message to people that they should test bottled water products before they put them on the market," Kemp told Ars. The jury trial, which spanned mid-September to this week, also revealed how the water poisoned people: It contained hydrazine, which was likely to have formed during the company's untested water processing method, according to Kemp and an expert witness.

Poisonous process

The poisonings came to light in early 2021 when the local authorities in Nevada and the Food and Drug Administration announced that at least five infants and children had suffered liver failure after drinking the water. The findings led to a recall, but some of the company's products remained on the market. In May 2021, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Real Water Inc. on behalf of the FDA, alleging the company's officers, Brent Jones and his son, Blain Jones, were selling adulterated products made amid multiple manufacturing violations. As Ars previously reported, the Joneses agreed to settle the case in June, and the DOJ bound them with a permanent injunction from ever preparing, processing, or selling water again. A study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in November 2021 laid out 25 cases of acute liver failure linked to the water—22 in Nevada and three in California, all of which occurred at the end of 2020. Specifically, the cases were linked to Real Water's 5-gallon Re²al Water product, sold in multiple Southwestern states in places like Whole Foods. At the time, the company claimed its water was infused with negative ions and had an alkaline pH of 9.0. Marketing for Real Water made vague references to unproven health benefits, such as suggesting that drinking the water leads to "increased cellular hydration." As federal regulators began investigating the company's water, they found a troubling water treatment process. According to the DOJ's 2021 complaint and testimony in the trial over the last few weeks, Real Water processed municipal tap water "by carbon filtration, reverse osmosis filtration, ultraviolet light filtration, and ozone filtration." Then potassium chloride is added and the water goes through a proprietary "ionizer" apparatus to apply an electrical current to the water. This allegedly created positively charged and negatively charged solutions. Real Water employees would discard the positively charged solution and keep the negatively charged solution. That initial batch of negatively charged solution would then go through the "ionizer" apparatus and be separated again. The resulting negatively charged solution would then be treated with potassium hydroxide (a form of lye), potassium bicarbonate (sometimes used in baking powders), and magnesium chloride (a salt used in nutritional supplements and for de-icing roads); this formed an "E2 concentrate" product, which, when diluted, formed their alkaline water product.

“Outrageous”

The FDA identified hydrazine in product samples it tested. In the trial, Issam Najm, an environmental engineer who specializes in water chemistry and testing, testified that the hydrazine likely formed in the "ionizer," which was just titanium tubes electrified with what looked like jumper cables used to charge a car battery. Najm testified that, in the charged water, nitrogen gas naturally found in air could have reacted with water to form hydrazine (N₂H₄), or, during the electrolysis, ammonia (NH₃) was formed first, before reacting with hydroxide to form hydrazine. Hydrazine, which is also used in boiler water to prevent corrosion, is known to be highly toxic. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, symptoms of acute exposures can damage the liver, kidneys, and the central nervous system. Symptoms can include temporary blindness, dizziness, headache, nausea, pulmonary edema, seizures, and coma in humans. According to Kemp, Real Water never tested for hydrazine, and the meters (made by Hanna Instruments and Milwaukee Instruments) the company used to test alkalinity were allegedly inaccurate, leading Real Water to produce yet more concentrated forms of its product than it thought. "These people were outrageous," Kemp said. There was "no safety testing, no analysis of the product to see what was in it." He said that the person who developed the water treatment process for Real Water bought the titanium tubes "from some Russian guy in the '80s" and spent four to five months making alkaline waters in his garage, working until he had a formula that didn't make him vomit or have diarrhea. Real Water's attorney, Joel Odou, said the company has accepted liability in the case, though he argued in court that the company should not be held liable for punitive damages. The company did test the water, he argued, but not for hydrazine. "This is a failure of imagination," he said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "A failure to understand there was hydrazine in the water." Odou did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Ars. Kemp expects Real Water to appeal the verdict and plans to try to have the appeal expedited.