can you boil salt water to drink it

You cannot make salt water safe to drink by just boiling it. Boiling kills germs, but the salt (and other minerals) stay behind and the remaining water actually gets saltier as it evaporates.

Quick answer

• Boiling salt water does not remove the salt, so the water is still unsafe to drink.
• In a survival situation, you must distill the water (capture and condense the steam) or use proper desalination, not just boil an open pot.

Why boiling isn’t enough

• Salt (mainly sodium chloride) has a very high boiling point and does not turn into vapor at normal boiling temperatures for water, so it is left behind in the pot.

• As water boils away, the same amount of salt is dissolved in less water, which raises the salinity and can make it more dangerous to drink than the original seawater.

Health risks of drinking boiled salt water

• The high salt load forces your kidneys to excrete extra salt using your body’s own water, causing a net loss of fluid and worsening dehydration.

• In serious cases, this can lead to confusion, kidney strain, electrolyte imbalance, and can be life‑threatening if you keep drinking it in place of fresh water.

How to make salt water drinkable

• Distillation:
  • Boil the salt water in a closed system, channel the steam into a separate container, and let it condense; the condensed water is fresh, and the salt stays behind.

• Solar stills and desalination gear:
  • Survival manuals and modern desalination units use versions of distillation or membranes (reverse osmosis) designed to remove salts and make seawater safe to drink.

Forum-style perspective

“You can boil saltwater, but if you just drink what’s left in the pot, you’re basically drinking concentrated seawater. To actually drink it, you need a still to catch the steam.”

TL;DR: “Can you boil salt water to drink it?” – You can boil it, but you can’t safely drink what’s left in the pot; you need distillation or proper desalination to remove the salt.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.