Alarming News About Drinking Water
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There’s a new chemical player in water purification that we should all be concerned about. It may cause birth defects, digestive problems, spleen damage, and lowered immunity among other things. The biggest problem is that most water filters will not eliminate it from the water. The new chemical is chloramine. This chemical is created by combining chlorine and ammonia.
Creating potable drinking water has never been easy. Chlorine has been the inexpensive chemical of choice in the United States for decades. However, when chlorine comes in contact with organic materials, compounds known as THMs are created. People have raised enough concern with the government over THMs that the amount of chlorine is being reduced, but the new levels may be too low to do the job everywhere. That’s how chloramine started being used.
Chloramine does lower the amount of THMs. It’s possible to use a reduced amount of chloramine because it doesn’t evaporate like chlorine. Chloramine is very persistent. It stays around so well it even works in human tissues after the water is consumed. Given the past history of supposedly safe products being found to be dangerous, we should be very cautious about Chloramine.
A study done at the University of Illinois showed that one of the by-products of chloramine was iodoacids. They may be among the most toxic substances ever found in drinking water. Another research study demonstrated that after 5 days 95% of a single dose of chloramine given to laboratory rats was still in their tissues. Imagine if you are drinking and bathing in chloramine every single day.
Chlorine can be easily removed from water. Even the small, pitcher-type water filters can be effective. On the other hand, chloramine remains in water even after passing through carbon block, ceramic, reverse osmosis, and distiller filters. This means that your water filter probably will not remove chloramine.
What You Can Do About Chloramine
We all want to make a better world and enjoy it, but let’s face it, you will never enjoy a better world if you are forced to drink poison. This is deadly serious stuff! You can take two important steps.. First determine if your water has chloramine in it. You can’t rely on your municipal utilities to tell you the truth, so the best course of action is to buy a test kit for less than $25. Second, if you do have chloramines in your water, purchase an effective chloramine filter.