“High-quality water is more than the dream of the conservationists, more than a political slogan; high quality water, in the right quantity at the right place at the right time, is essential to health, recreation, and economic growth.” ~Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine
How many ingredients does it take to make H2O, just Hydrogen and Oxygen, isn’t it? Then why are there so many ingredients in water? Chlorine, fluoride, arsenic, aluminum, cadmium, not to mention pesticides, herbicides, fungacides, and runoff from industrial byproducts… and the list goes on and on. Let’s take a look at all the amazing benefits these surprising ingredients have for us.
We’ll start with chlorine. You know the itchy, burny eyes and dry skin after a swim in the pool, the extra conditioner you use in the shower, the body lotion after bathing, the aftertaste of tap water? Why has this chemical element been added into our drinking water, pools, showers, baths, and hot tubs? Our government claims that using chlorine and chlorine dioxide controls microbes, as well as tastes and odors. But since when did water smell and taste so bad that we had to add a chemical to it?
Chlorine (Cl2) is incredibly toxic, which is why we find it in cleaning products, such as bleach. This toxicity of chlorine makes it a useful agent to kill the bacteria, viruses, and protozoans in our drinking water that cause diseases such as typhoid and cholera, and in this respect, water chlorination seems to be working admirably. When’s the last time you had a neighbor die of cholera? Unfortunately, while putting chlorine or hypochlorite (a chlorine and oxygen ion, ClO-) might spare us the travails of dysentery, we’re still consuming an extremely toxic substance.
We wouldn’t drink the water from a swimming pool, and we certainly wouldn’t drink bleach. Clearly we know that chlorine isn’t good for us, so how much chlorine in our drinking water is too much? At what point does it become dangerous?
The EPA allows for 4 mg/L of chlorine as an annual average and .8 mg/L of chlorine dioxide. This is what is referred to as a Maximum Residual Disinfectant Level, and because it is an annual average, the actual amount of chlorine or chlorine dioxide could even exceed this number during some months. While the World Health Organization states that the benefits of water chlorination far outweigh the risks, a good water filtration system can help you avoid the risks altogether.
Reasons to keep chlorine out of your drinking water include:
· Chlorine has been linked to increasing food allergies.[i]
· Chlorine is a component of bleach.
· Chlorine can combine with organic compounds that occur naturally in our drinking water, and can produce disinfection byproducts (DBPs), which are not only carcinogenic, but are also linked to liver, kidney and heart diseases.[ii]
“There is a lot of well-founded concern about chlorine. When chlorine is added to our water, it combines with other natural compounds to form Trihalomethanes (chlorination byproducts), or THMs. These chlorine byproducts trigger the production of free radicals in the body, causing cell damage, and are highly carcinogenic. The Environmental Defense Fund warns that, ‘Although concentrations of these carcinogens (THMs) are low, it is precisely these low levels that cancer scientists believe are responsible for the majority of human cancers in the United States.’”[iii]
Think about the amount of chlorine in a pool for a minute. The recommended chlorine levels for a swimming pool are 1-3 ppm (parts per million), yet, according to EPA guidelines, our drinking water can have chlorine levels of up to 4 ppm. And, remember, we’re exposed to chlorine tactilely as well as orally. Every time we bathe, swim, or shower, we absorb chlorine through our skin. In fact, because the pores in our skin open up more during a warm shower, the rate at which our bodies absorb chlorine actually increases. According to Dr. Julian Whitaker, “The steam we inhale while showering can contain up to 20 times the concentration of chlorine and other synthetic chemicals as tap water, due to the fact that these chemicals vaporize at a much lower temperature and at a much faster rate than water. While over 98% of the water coming from the showerhead goes down the drain, 70-90% of the chemicals in the water vaporize before the water hits the shower floor.”[iv]
Chlorine is not the only additional element in our municipal water supplies that should give us pause. The addition of fluoride to our water sources has been a contentious issue for years. But that’s coming up next.
[i] “Dichlorophenol-containing pesticides and allergies: results from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005-2006,” Jerschow, Elina et al. Annals of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology 109:6 (December 2012).
[ii] "Public Health Statement: Bromoform & Dibromochloromethane.” ATSDR. 2011.
[iii] “Is This One Daily Habit Increasing Your Risk of Cancer?” LiveFreeLiveNatural.com. 12/26/13 <http://livefreelivenatural.com/one-daily-habit-increasing-risk-cancer/#sthash.ESGDMlpU.dpuf>
[iv] Whitaker, Julian. “Water Filtration: Why Filter?” Live Healthy < http://livehealthy.aquasana.com/water-filtration/>
