In Digest #951, James-Osbourne: Holmes wrote: "I use stainless cookware, and do all of my cooking with the same distilled water with which I make silver. I think it depends on a whole bunch of factors. I doubt very much if the leaching in practice is of any consequence whatsoever. "Copper is another story. DW dissolves it quite rapidly; such that you cannot use ordinary copper water tube for DW distribution. It will both perforate quickly---exactly how fast I don't know-and put a lot of copper in the water. I suspect--but do not know---that it will put a potentially toxic amount of Cu into the water, depending on how much you drink. If one had a sensitive scale, you could put a chunk into DW and weigh it after it had been in there a while, constantly changing the water so that the dissolved copper would not slow down the process. The "Waterwise" still manufacturer may offer solid information about the various grades of SS. This would still not duplicate the process of running continuously fresh DW through a pipe."
Some worthwhile advice there, James. Reminds me of a story run a few months back on TV here in Oz, about the huge cost of corrosion in copper water pipe. It's locale dependent but occurs all over the world. Apparently no-one has an answer as to why it happens or how to cure it (apart from replacing the pipe). Interestingly, there seemed to be a correlation between higher levels of dissolved iron picked up from ground water, and copper corrosion levels.
