Pi Water and PiMag Water
pseudoscientific snake oil


There is no scientific basis for claims that these waters are significantly different from ordinary filtered drinking water, or that they confer any special health benefits.

Pi Water is a name given to various commercial water products that are purported to be enhanced in mysterious ways in order to benefit the body and living things in general. "Pi Water" is registered as a trademark with the USPTO, assigned to Pi-Tech America Inc of Chicago which seems to have a very low profile. Both Pi Water and PiMag™ Water (described further below) are widely available through multi-level marketing schemes.

The concept of Pi Water apparently originated in Japan, a country that seems to be obsessed with water-quackery. Credit has been given in various places to different individuals—Kushi, Masuda, Tatanabe, Yamashita, and even the notorious Dr. Jhon. One story about the "discovery" of Pi Water says

It was originally thought a hormone was responsible for causing plants to bud. Dr.Yamashita was conducting research, attempting to isolate this hormone, when he discovered that what was causing the flower to bud was not a hormone at all but a very minute amount of ferric ferrous salt. In 1964, Dr. Yamashita, an agricultural scholar furthered his research and found that this substance had other highly beneficial qualities.

(This is erroneous nonsense, of course; no reports of this in the scientific literature are cited.)

The two things that seem to differentiate Pi Water from the many other similar products on the market are the following:

The preparation of Pi Water involves reatment with a "ferric ferrous (bivalent and trivalent ferrite)" compound and "Inducing this ferric ferrous salt into a high-energy state and infusing it through a ceramic filter process.." present in only a trace amount so that it conveys its "energy signature".

Except for the "ferrite" part, this seems to describe Fe3O4 in which both FeII and FeIII are present; such a compound occurs naturally as the mineral magnetite, the main component of the natural magnet lodestone. There is no evidence that this can affect water in any way.

The bits about "inducing it into a high energy state" and the magical "ceramic filter process" are meaningless puffery. And of course the "energy signature" part is homeopathic humbug.

Promotions of Pi Water like to show side-by-side photos of plants that they say were grown with and without this magic elixir. Another common claim is that "goldfish were able to live for up to 216 days in a sealed container living off the energy in the water." There is no way of independently verifying these pictures and descriptions of events. No evidence for effects of this kind has been cited in the reputable scientific literature.

Other claims made for Pi Water, all on the BalancedLives site and all without any supporting evidence:

Not to be outdone by competing quack water nostrums, Pi Water is also supposed to duplicate the [falsely] claimed benefits of just about every other product on the market:

"[carry] more oxygen throughout the body, creating an oxygen rich environment that destroys anaerobic organisms."

How this is compatible with its alleged rust-preventing properties mentioned above is a good question for Chemistry students!

"It increases the body's amount of natural killer cells"


A thinly-disguised that it might prevent or cure cancer.

"It creates minute water clusters, which improves the functions of cells and the detoxifying effects of water." "It enhances the transmission of information throughout the body."

"Water clusters" are a classic pseudoscientific hobby horse; see the Water Cluster Quackery page; their involvment in "information transmission" reflecst the old fictions peddled by Cellcore.
"It neutralizes the pH of water, bringing it to just above 7 which is very close to the pH of the body (few filtration systems manage water pH, as well as magnetic forces, far-infrared wave and pi infusion" There are thousands of huckster sites extolling the virtues of "alkaline water" and importance of body pH control; please see the Ionized and alkallne water scams page. The idea that magnetic or "far-infrared" treatment can have any effect on pH is pure bunk.

PiMag Water

PiMag™ water is the brand of "Pi Water" marketed by Nikken, a California-based company that offers a broad range of products based on weird magnetic and "far-infrared" (i.e., heat) effects, none of which has any scientific basis. According to the USPTO, "PIMAG" is their trademark for "Magnetic fluid conditioning units for the treatment of water for domestic, commercial and industrial use."

Nikken makes some special claims about PiMag water:

It is "created by natural mineral deposits and negative ions"

This probably refers to the "ferrous-ferric" stuff noted above. It is not clear what they mean by "negative ions"; according to the electroneutrality principle, it is impossible to have a signficicant charge imbalance in bulk matter. Whatever the case, there is no reason to believe any of this.

"Special pi ceramics from deep-sea coral reflect far-infrared energy — sometimes called the "wavelength of life." The water flows through a magnetic field to complete the process." This is pseudoscientific nonsense which serves only to mislead the scientifically illiterate. Far-infrared is just another name for radiant heat. There is no reason to believe that ceramic materials (whether or not derived from coral) possess any special properties in this regard, or that far-i.r. has any special connection to living organisms. The mystique of coral is pure hucksterism, as discussed on the CoralScams page.

Nikken also offers two devices that are supposed to create PiMag water:

No evidence is offered to suggest that these devices are any more useful than an ordinary filter-equipped water pitcher. The claims relating to magnets, enhanced oxygen content, vibrations, pi-particles and acid/alkaline balance are scientifcally absurd.


{Health Quarterly 2003 article} on Nikken's PiMag Water and other dubious products