I saw the Penta water at Whole Foods! Then I subjected my boyfriend to a five-minute rant about how it was bullshit pseudoscience and shouldn't be allowed.

I too have seen Penta (as well as other, similar procucts) at whole foods, and gave my girlfriend the same speech... it really is disturbing... so the next question (raised in the forum after your posting) is whether there is anything consumers can do about it. Is it possible to sue them for false advertising? Please post a follow-up on whether their "publication" makes any sense... Perhaps it is worth a call to their coorporate headquarters (recorded of course) to investigate their official stance is on the validity of thier claims... might be fun!

You know, I feel the same way listening to people at electronics stores trying to sell computers to old ladies.

"Oh no, ma'am, you *need* 512MB of RAM to check your e-mail..."

We should band together and form a vigilante group against corporations who take advantage of the ignorance of the masses.

A....very nerdy...vigilante group....

So I've done a bit of research on Web of Science today. I couldn't find the exact paper shown in the above entry from the Physics of Vibrations journal, but I did find some others by the same authors on the same subject. The problem may be that Physics of Vibrations is such an obscure journal that not even Web of Science lists it.

The paper I got a copy of is called "Spectroscopy of Spontaneous Raman Scattering of a Liquid-Water Local Structure in the Field of an Intense Ultrasound Pulse" by A. P. Brysev et al. Incidentally, this was published the same year as the Penta-cited paper, so it should be similar in content too.

Essentially, they showed that the structure of water molecules relative to one another changed when the water was hit with an ultrasonic pulse using a technique called Raman spectroscopy.

This sounds a lot like what Penta water is claiming BUT when they describe their methods, they say that "the laser was synchronized so that its pulse was generated just before the trailing edge of the ultrasound pulse crossed the focal point. The spatial–temporal coincidence of the laser and ultrasound pulses was observed by the light diffraction on the ultrasound wave." Essentially this means that they observed the water's structure IMMEDIATELY after the ultrasound was applied. This is because the changes in structure last for only picoseconds (1/1,000,000,000,000ths of a second). Thus structural changes may occur, but water returns to normal immediately after the driving force for change (i.e. the ultrasonic pulse) is gone. So the only way they could observe altered clustering was to observe it right away.

Also, the article never mentions Penta water specifically, so I'm not quite sure why Penta warrants citing these articles on their website (albeit in a half-assed way). I'd post the article itself, but I'm not sure it's legal. Here's the full citation (if anyone is interested I can email you the PDF):

A. P. Brysev, A. F. Bunkin, R. V. Klopotov, L. M. Krutyanski, A. A. Nurmatov, and S. M. Pershin, "Spectroscopy of Spontaneous Raman Scattering of a Liquid-Water Local Structure in the Field of an Intense Ultrasound Pulse." Optics and Spectroscopy, 93:2, pp. 282-285 (2002).

Penta water... yes...

I'm not sure if it's nationwide, but Penta water sold at Whole Foods in San Diego explicitly says that their findings are endorsed by researchers at UCSD. A professor, who will remain nameless, wrote a letter to them in protest. Penta water ended up giving him an out of court settlement... ie., hush money.

bah humbug!

Holy cow. That's crazy, but totally in line with their usual marketing ploys consisting of outright lies. All of the researchers they usually seem to cite come from Russia.

Aw hell. Here's the link to a PDF of the paper I'm referring to in my comment above.

I got a really nice email from a math/engineering librarian at the University of California San Diego a few weeks ago. It provides a nice follow-up to Ngoc's earlier comment. I'd planned to post her email, but things got busy at school, so I'm just now getting around to it:

From: Deborah Kegel
To: nate@lomtick.com
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 22:11:36 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: I like the Penta info on your blog

Nate -
Thank you for pointing out the hazy science behind Penta. There is no
scientific research supporting Penta done by UCSD or Scripps. When
alerted to this allegation last winter by a physician from a major eastern
UC medical clinic, I looked and looked in Web of Science, Chem Abstracts,
PubMed, and other credible indexes of scientific research and also queried
a colleague at Scripps Research Institute - there was nada. I even called
Penta hq in Carlsbad and the person in research who I was transferred to,
didn't give me a name/citation when I specifically asked him about the
research from UCSD or Scripps. He emailed me a pdf of research, but it
was unreadable.

There used to be the following on the Pentawater aka hydrateforlife web
site under Research:
"A study conducted at a Major Southern California University demonstrated
Penta was absorbed 14.3 percent faster than unprocessed water. The study
compared the rate of water influx of Penta into a cell to that of the
rate of the influx of other water."
but they've taken it off. (Hmm, maybe because it was not true?!) The
internet wayback machine is quite useful in documenting the misinformation
and when it appeared. Pentawater even said "A collaborative study
conducted by the University of California San Diego and Scripps Research
Institute" at one point in 2003, but it's not there anymore on their web
site. The only citations are to Russian research and the papers aren't
medically based at all.

You may run into old press releases on the web or on popular health sites
or flyers at grocery stores that still have that misinformation or the
statement about Scripps or UCSD, but it's just plain wrong. I hadn't heard
the rumor about a lawsuit that Ngoc mentioned, but I'm glad something made
Penta stop saying it.

I don't think much of the US Patent Office for granting a patent on this,
but if you search the principal US class/subclass [ 424/439 : Food or
edible as carrier for pharmaceutical] that is assigned to their patent,
you'll find some other dubious patents including a treatment for baldness
involving oolong tea. The USPTO is not the FDA in terms of testing for
efficacy.

Personally, I left a note at my local Wild Oats affiliate store on a Penta
contest entry form saying they ought not to carry the product as it was
bad water science. Alas, the product is still there, but health food
stores have a number of products with puffery medical stories. Let the
buyer beware (and I hope that the buyer paid attention during chemistry
and biology class in high school/college). Too bad the FDA can't get some
teeth back into regulating herbal supplements and other products making
medical claims without the proper testing and scientific studies on
harmfullness. Unfortunately, San Diego is home to both high level
scientific research institutions and also to companies making money off of
people who are scientifically ignorant.

Deborah Kegel
UCSD Math/Engineering Librarian
[All opinions expressed are my own and not that of UCSD.]

wow this is great. aren't librarians wonderful. i'm so glad that what i intended to be a fun little laugh at a sample i picked up at a food show has turned into a downright gang-bang of penta. huzzah.