Chlorine has been used as a disinfectant by water treatment plants for a long time, but there has been a growing concern in recent years about the consequences of consuming the chemical and its byproducts. Today we’re going to talk about the health effects of chlorine in our drinking water and what you can do to remove it!
How does chlorine get in our drinking water?
Chlorine is a disinfectant that’s used by most of the water treatment plants across the country. It is added to water in order to kill off dangerous bacteria that could otherwise spread water-borne illnesses like typhoid and cholera. Water treatment plants use chlorine in different amounts depending on the conditions of the water at any given time, and the chemical is sometimes mixed with ammonia to create a disinfectant known as chloramine.
How does chlorine in our drinking water affect our health?
Although chlorine is great for warding off water-borne illnesses, it comes with a price. When chlorine reacts with organic matter in our water, it creates chemical byproducts called trihalomethanes (THMs). Studies have linked the long-term consumption of THMs with a number of different health issues, including:
- Stomach problems
- Weakened immune system
- Birth defects
- Liver malfunction
- Increased risk for bladder, kidney and rectal cancers
How can you remove chlorine from your drinking water?
So we know that chlorine is useful for keeping our water supplies safe, but also that it comes with some dangerous side effects. Luckily, there is a way to benefit from chlorine’s disinfectant powers while also avoiding its health risks: install a water filtration system in your home.
A water filtration system provides a final safety barrier for your home’s water by removing THMs and other harmful contaminants. A point-of-use system can be used to treat the drinking water at a single faucet, while a point-of-entry system can treat all of your home’s water and provide pure water at every tap.
If you have any questions about chlorine in your drinking water, or if you’d like a water treatment system serviced or installed in your home, contact North Carolina Water Consultants. We provide Hague water filtration installations in North and South Carolina, servicing towns like Cornelius, Huntersville and Charlotte, NC.
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