The Health Effects of Chlorine in Your Water

All of us who obtain water from a municipality know that it contains chlorine. Municipalities are required to use chlorine and it’s added to kill organisms that naturally occur and are harmful to humans.

Before we treated our water, all kinds of things were found in domestic water systems. At one time, strainers were installed in the water mains in the streets of Washington, D.C. to keep small eels from coming into the home and out of the faucet.

Why do we use chlorine to purify our water? As I understand it, in the early part of the 20th century, water purity became a major concern. World War I was just winding down and the chemical industry had large supplies of chlorine left over from making mustard gas. A chemical lobby got a law passed requiring chlorine to be used to treat water. This seemed like a good idea at first, however, over the years, we’ve discovered the serious health effects of long-term use of water treated with chlorine.

Among the effects are these examples from the website www.friendsofwater.com:

• Thomas C. Chalmers and his colleagues at Harvard University have noted a 21 percent increase in the risk of bladder cancer. Long-term drinking of chlorinated water appears to increase a person’s risk of developing bladder cancer by as much as 80 percent. Some 45,000 Americans are diagnosed with bladder cancer every year.
• Drinking chlorinated water has been officially linked to an increased incidence of colon cancer.
• Experts have found a 14 percent increase in birth defects where chlorinated water is consumed.

To remove or avoid chlorine, concerned families filter their drinking water at the tap or buy bottled water. This is not a complete solution, as homeowners are still exposed to chlorine when bathing and washing. Our skin is our body’s largest organ and it absorbs the chlorinated water as we wash. And, when hot water comes out of the showerhead, much of it becomes steam. That steam contains chlorine in gaseous form and is breathed into our bodies.

It’s wonderful not to have our water make us sick through water-born organisms, but we now find the solution to the problem is killing us.

We suggest you install a whole-house carbon filter to remove the chlorine from all domestic water as it enters your home. Your water will be safe to drink and bathe in, as it’s no longer contaminated with chlorine. 

Additional benefits to using filtered water include:

• Improved skin. (Chlorine makes me, and many others, itchy and dry after a shower.)
• Improved shampooing by using less shampoo and gaining softer hair.
• Better tasting water from the tap, so it’s no longer necessary to purchase and haul expensive bottled water and pollute the environment with all those plastic bottles. Plus, your family may consume more water when it doesn’t smell like chlorine. (And we know how important hydration is to good health.)
• Better tasting food, coffee and tea.
• Longer lasting plumbing, as chlorinated water eats the rubber and plastic parts of your toilet tanks and faucets. Imagine the savings if your toilets and faucets lasted twice as long between repairs.

All of these financial and environmental benefits more than cover the cost of a whole-house carbon filter and you gain all of the good things mentioned above.

To good water!

Jim Mitcham
JIM's, Inc.
jimsphac@aol.com
(301) 926-3499