Our neighborhood has used well water since forever, but we’ve run out and now the municipal utility district is pumping it in from a neighboring city. That city’s water is treated with chloramines (not chlorine). I’m kinda glad for the switch since that city’s water tastes much better than ours.
Anyway, a neighbor has been ranting that chloramines are toxic, carcinogenic, etc. She says not to drink it, cook with it, or even shower in it. She’s going on like one of those fluoride conspiracy theorists. I ignored her until I got a municipal notice today, the type filled with fine print and legalese, all about chloramine. This wouldn’t cause big concern for me, it is just a cya thing. Except apparently our new tap water is unsuitable for fish aquariums (it will kill the fish) nor home dialysis machines (it could kill the patient). It also can’t be filtered out or boiled out. Neighbor says, “I told you so.” I search Google and find only more confusion.
What’s the deal with chloramine treated tap water?
I’ve been drinking it for the past 4 years since our town switched to chloramine, and I’m still posting. I use water preparation drops to treat water for the fishtank, and the fish have survived too.
Chloromine is safe for fish tanks when treated with a water conditioner. The conditioner breaks apart the chloromine, and leaves nitrate in the water, which is harmless to the fish. Nitrate is the byproduct of the aquariums natural biological filter, and so it will be present in any health aquarium.
“Chloramines” merely means that rather than pure chlorine, NH2Cl is added - essentially chlorine and ammonia (as you probably surmised from the name.)
Chlorine, while an effective disinfective agent, readily offgasses out of water supplies. Chloramine complexes stay dissolved for much longer, retaining the antibiotic properties of the initial chlorine dose.
Many, many, many major municipalities use chloramination. You’ve got nothing to worry about.
-ISOT, who spent a summer interning in a city drinking water laboratory.
The same goes for regular old chlorine. The reason why chloromines are not safe for fish tanks, is unlike chlorine, they don’t readily break down with time. You have to use a water conditioner with them. Letting the water age like many aquarium owners do won’t cut it.
Weirdly enough, the don’t-shower-in-it thing probably has a grain of truth to it, unlike the don’t-drink-it. In high concentrations (like what you find in swimming pools after the chlorine has combined with sweat or urine), chloramine can actually be irritating to the lungs, and people with tons of exposure to indoor pools (eg competitive swimmers and lifeguards) have been shown to have higher rates of asthma. That said, the concentration of chloramines in drinking water is way lower than what you’d find in pools, and isn’t a problem even when inhaled.
I don’t know if it would help to point out to the crazy neighbor that there are numerous liquids that are perfectly safe for human consumption, e.g. milk, juice, coffee, tea, etc, that are contraindicated for use in an aquarium or home dialysis machine. Apparently water with chloramine can be added to that list.
I will say that since moving to a city that uses chloramine my hair has gotten grayer, I have gained 20 lbs, and I have started growing hair in undesirable places.
Yes, but on the other hand I’ve grown more than three feet and learned to poop in the potty since we moved to Chloramine Town. It’s obviously far superior to well water.
I am the co-director of the Chloramine Information Center in Camp Hill, PA. We have been researching the use of chloramine in drinking water systems for the past three years and fighting the implementation of it in our water system. There is much more to be concerned about with chloramine than just the fish and dialysis patients. While those are certainly urgent concerns the acute and long term health ramifications for the general population are much more dire. I can tell you that the information below is the concensus of the scientific community, the subject of over 50 peer reviewed studies by the top water chemists in the country and not even wholely disputed by the EPA.
**Acute health concerns **- Hundreds of people across the country are reporting respiratory, dermal and digestive ailments when drinking or showering in chloraminated water. Chloraminated water used to make baby formula can cause Blue Baby Syndrome. (That is right in the Water Quality Reports.) monochloramine speciates into di and tri chloramine. Tri chloramine is a known respiratory irritant known to cause ‘swimmers asthma’ in lifeguards and routine swimmers. The same effect is being seen when chloraminated water is vaporized in showers. I have personal stories from those who are suffering and other citizen groups have accumulated photos of the skin rashes.
**Ineffective biocide **- the World Health Organization has determined chloramine to be the least effective of the available disinfectants in killing e-coli, rotoviruses and polio 1. Germany has banned its use in their country. France will not use it and in fact most of Europe does not use it for this reason. In fact, the EPA banned chloramine in 1978 for one year because it was believed to be an ineffective biocide. Thirty years of research has concluded that it is indeed ineffective, yet the EPA continues to allow it. You may remember the recent articles about beef that was treated with ammonia supposedly to kill bacteria. That beef ended up to be ecoli tainted.
Long term health concerns - While chloramine does indeed reduce the THMs and HAAs of chlorine, it creates its own new set of byproducts that are 100 to 10000 times MORE TOXIC than THMs and HAAs. These byproducts include NDMA, Hydrazine, DXAA and Iodo acids. THey are genotoxic (damage DNA), cytotoxic (damage cells) and carcinogenic. In fact the EPA has classified hydrazine and NDMA as ‘probable human carcinogens’ yet still allow the use of chloramine in drinking water.
**Fish kills **- we have documented massive fish kills across the US and in Canada as a result of main breaks in chloraminated areas. One killed 9 miles of creek down to the earthworm. In Canada, it killed thoussands of species of salmonids and invertibrates. In california, even when people use rain water to fill their backyard ponds, just using the sprinkler on their lawn killed the frogs in their ponds.
Infrastructure - Chloramine is more corrosive than chlorine. It leaches lead from the pipes, literally ‘eats’ rubber and elastomer fittings, pits pipes allowing bacteria into the distribution system and presents a national security issue as it is less reactive to contaminants.
Filters - Chloramine can only be reduced not eliminated by certified filters that are very expensive. NSF says that no filters currently available will take out the highly toxic byproducts. In addition, a filter is only as good as the four walls of your house. If you go to work, school, a restaurant, vacation, family, friends, stores etc you are not protected by your filter. And what about people who rent orpeople who move alot for their jobs?
This information is backed by significant science by the top water chemists in the country. If you look at the EPA website you will notice that they carefully limit their responses to ‘monochloramine’ . They say ‘monochloramine’ does not cause cancer. ‘monochloramine’ does not cause respiratory problems., etc. they do not address the ‘unintended consequences’ of monochloramine such as tri chloramine and the highly toxic byproducts. This stuff is dangerous. It is not sufficiently studied and it is not yet regulated though the scientific community is unanimously convinced that it will be when the EPA gets to it in 10 or 20 years. For reasons why you should not rely on EPA materials to evaluate this or other environmental safety issues affecting your life you have only to look at the headlines for the past 5 years. EPA is currently defending itself before Congress for allowing damaging levels of lead in the DC water system for 4 years while telling everyone the water was safe. Thousands of children were affected by brain damaging lead consentrations. The gas drilling is back inthe news with EPA backpedaling on its safety for drinking water sources. EPA has been slow and ineffective in their response to the Gulf Oil fiasco. This agency is in the pocket of big business and not doing their job to protect us or the environment.
If you would like to see any of the documentation backing these statements or if you would like to talk to me - contact information is:
Hey, my first post----I dont think anyone has pointed out that chloramines and chlororganics are both formed in a system that uses free chlorine for disinfection. They are formed when the “demand” on the free chlorine is too high. These can lead to odor and taste problems, but like it says previously,the concentrations are to low for really adverse health effects. We at the water department are not going to try to harm anyone!
Let’s ask why they put chloramine in water. It’s to kill all the bacteria that causes all sorts of diseases that could cause you to die. Look at all the waterborne diseases found in the rest of the world where treated water is rare. Cholera, Amoebiasis, Griadiasis, Cyclosporiais, Botulism, E. coli. Look at the death rates from these diseases.
Besides, well water is not necessarily a resource full of purity and wholesomeness. If you live in a rural area, it is very likely your well water is filled with agricultural chemicals and fertilizers. It might be one of the reasons why your water was switched from well water to city water.
I’ll take a shot - but my experience is limited to a chemistry degree and six months at a major municipal drinking water lab.
Sure - chloramine is an irritant to be sure. But so is salt, if you get it in high enough concentrations. Swimming pools are what is causing respiratory issues (it’s not called “showering in tap water asthma”) and that is after chronic exposures to water treated with high levels of chloramines, in an enclosed environment, and under conditions which lends itself towards lower pH (more on this in a moment). I will eat gravel if you can prove that a normal level of chloramine in water can cause skin irritation in healthy people. Also, hundreds/300,000,000 = not really a problem.
I don’t know what you’re talking about with Blue Baby Syndrome.
Really? The least effective? I’m sure there are far worse ways to disinfect water. Lots of countries use lots of different ways to disinfect their water - oh hey! By the way you forgot to mention that Great Britain uses chloramination, as do a number of other countries. Maybe we should use chlorine dioxide like Germany instead - that sounds much healthier.
Chloramines are used - as has been mentioned - because it preserves its disinfective abilities for much longer than other options which offgas out of water supplies, not because it it’s an extremely effective biocide. Chlorine and ClO2 are great and dandy until they diffuse out of the water supply two-thirds of the way down the line. The alternative is to significantly increase the levels of chlorination, which obviously leads to its own problems. Treatments like ozone and UV are one-time-only and usually must be incorporated with longer term chemical biocides.
I dunno what beef has to do with this conversation. Or ammonia, for that matter.
Excuse me while I go laugh hysterically for a second. Okay, I’m back. What? This is classic pseudoscientific scaremongering. Sure, maybe you can torture organic chemistry into claiming some horrible radical- or UV-catalyzed reaction or oxidation byproduct that creates some zomg horrible compound. Just look at how toxic they are! All those LD50s and carcinogenic warnings! Except you’re forgetting to mention two important facts; first and most important that minuscule amounts of these compounds are going to form under the highly catalytic and reactive environment of tap water, and that we routinely test for all sorts of toxins every single day.
In our lab, all day, every day, there is an organic chemist who pipes samples of drinking water (trucked in thrice-daily from different points along the distribution line, along with any customers who want their water tested) into a GC/MS to measure the levels of organics. We have another chemist who exclusively tests for metals (kind of a jerk, made my pipette 70% nitric into hundreds of his aliquots) of all kinds. Another runs a mindboggling number of assays and titrations to test for things like free ammonia (critical for most of those omgscary things you’ve mentioned), urea (another one), various nitrogenous compounds and a bunch of stuff I don’t remember.
In my entire time working there, we never had any samples from these guys outside the norms. So, not only do the compounds you’re talking about not exist in the water (not really,) but we’d find them if they did, anyhow.
Oh, by the way, re: dichloramine and trichloramine…well… As you may know, these species exist in equilibrium with each other. As a low estimate, the equilibrium concentrations of dichloramine are 10^3ish lower, trichloramines another couple orders of magnitude. It’s also sensitive to pH - monochloramine dominates by FAR until a pH of 5 or so, which means…not much of it in drinking water, sorry. Maybe in swimming pools, which is why it’s important to check your pH regularly.
This is unfortunate if it’s true in the magnitude that you’re talking about, although I doubt it is. As it’s been mentioned however, most of the alternative methods to chloramine use also kill fish. If chloramine causes worse fishkills, I imagine it’s probably an unintended consequence of its (deliberate) longevity in solution. Main breaks are extremely rare anyways.
In California, I bet the frogs die much more quickly from the weed killer and fertilizer on top of the grass than the chloramines in the water.
As a lab monkey, I can’t comment on this as much. I do know that the manlier and burlier guys with mustaches and beer bellies did drive out to broken equipment occasionally, but most of that stuff was decades old. Metals leaching is a problem only when a) pipes are old enough to use lead solder (lead PIPES? not so much) and b) the water sits for long periods of time in the tubes. Running water just doesn’t accumulate many metals, which means you can’t blame the city mains. Customers were free to request a sample kit, and we’d test their water for them. Chlorinated water picks up lead just fine. This is a domestic plumbing issue, not a disinfection policy one.
National security? You’re really just machinegunning out the buzz phrases here, huh?
I forgot to mention we also had a full time microbiologist and intern running countless assays and plates for bacterial contamination. We did have the occasional E. coli outbreak, usually in an open reservoir or a city fountain. The major concern for municipal water are fecal coliforms, which are extensively and exhaustively tested for. One bad test is enough to drain millions and millions of gallons from a contaminated reservoir.
Eh. What does “reduced not eliminated” mean? Chloramines appear to be pretty much harmless anyways - and certainly less so than the cholera outbreaks which used to sweep through cities before we figures out the whole chlorination thing. You’re being a little weird, don’t you think?
I’ve been drinking the stuff for fifty year without any apparent effect however I grant you the above point. You only use chlorine when the water is practically drinkable anyway, if there is industry or farming in the catchment then much more extensive treatment is used.
But why, instead of dumping chemicals into the water to kill the bacteria, don’t you people instead clean the water? I don’t understand, have you not heard of water treatment and water prevention plans; are the communities to poor to build them; are there no laws to properly clean water, just that the bacteria needs to be reduced, so the cheapest way with chemicals is chosen; is providing clean water a private, cost-oriented enterprise, instead of a community-oriented service; are companies allowed to pollute the water too much without paying damage?
I mean, dopers claim that the laws have been tighneted back from the 60s when the rivers in the US caught on fire, and now that the rivers are much cleaner - though other sources say that most water in the US is still highyl polluted because under Reagan, laws were relaxed and the EPA, responsible for monitoring, had budget cuts. So is your water clean or not? And do you want it clean or just treated?
You ask “And do you want it clean or just treated?”
By this do you mean that you want the water sources to be toxin free prior to treatment?
Or do you presume that we can expect water sources to be naturally clean enough to drink from without treatment?
Are all the surface waters wherever you live perfectly sterile and devoid of all life? Nary a goose to drop a deuce at the water intake? While fertilizer run-off, sewage effluent and such can make it worse for sure, even far away from civilization I think it is ill-advised to slurp down a lot of untreated surface water.
I don’t understand, have you not heard of water treatment and water prevention plans; are the communities to poor to build them; are there no laws to properly clean water, just that the bacteria needs to be reduced, so the cheapest way with chemicals is chosen; is providing clean water a private, cost-oriented enterprise, instead of a community-oriented service; are companies allowed to pollute the water too much without paying damage?