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In order to turn sea water into drinkable water, virtually all of the salt must be removed. By definition, salts are ionic compounds. I am assuming that there are other non-ionic compounds devolved in the sea water, must these compounds be removes as well before water becomes safe to drink? In general, do non-ionic compounds present the same dehydration dangers as salts when consumed in drinking water? Why or why not?
For this question, lets not consider other toxic effects besides dehydration.
Actually, the salt in seawater doesn't kill you directly. It dehydrates you and you die of thirst. If you mixed 1 part of seawater with 2 parts of fresh water, it would not dehydrate you, but you would need to eliminate the excess salt so you would need to drink a lot of this salty water.
There are many living things in seawater that can kill you. Red Tide (excuse me, harmful algal bloom) is an algae common to warm water that produces a toxin. Very little of this toxin is needed to kill a person.
Yes, non-ionic but solvable compounds, if present in high enough concentration in water, can dehydrate human. For example, sugars, if present in high concentrations, dehydrate living organisms, and this is the reason why honey can be stored for years without significant loss in quality. Sugar sirup is a well known preservative, traditionally used in slavic countries to preserve fruits and berries.
However, seawater contains very little amount of non-ionic compounds, and most of them belongs to living things of various nature and, to some extent, their wastes. Moreover, traditions schemes of desalination filters off this impurities as well. This is actually a problem, as perfectly clean water is not healthy to consume, so generally it is preferable to add some carefully balanced amount of salts to such water.
