For many people, the smell of chlorine brings back fond memories of summer spent in swimming pool. If you notice the same smell in your drinking, you should be concerned rather being nostalgic.
You may wonder how chlorine ended up in being in your tap water? Well that’s simply because water treatment plants add chlorine to keep water safe from microorganisms before it reaches your home.
Even through chlorine is added to water throughout the world, it’s important to address the issue of bad taste and strong chemical smell before you drink the water.
Why is chlorine added to water?
Ideally, drinking water should be clear, colourless, odourless, and tasteless. It should not contain any suspended particles or microorganisms such as bacteria.
Water has to travel a long way from water treatment plant before it reaches your home. It could pick up a lot of impurities during its course due to pipe leakage, old pipes and also while sitting in storage tanks. The objective is to keep chlorine at sufficient levels all the way up to the tap.
Chlorine is a highly effective and economical way to disinfecting the water and keeping it safe from germs. It easily maintains a residual level in the water that continues protecting drinking water supplies from bacteria growth.
Why you should remove chlorine from drinking water?
Perhaps, one of the popular reasons to consider removing chlorine from tap water is the unappealing taste and smell it imparts to the water. If there’s too much chlorine in water, you may notice bleach-like odour and a strong chemical taste. Chlorine can alter the taste of water, coffee, tea and other beverages.
In general, levels under 4 milligrams per litre of chlorine is safe to drink, cook, clean, and bathe in. Despite its effectiveness and economic advantages, chlorinating water supplies has problems of its own.
However, there can be disinfection by-products that emerge when chlorine-treated water flows through the pipes. Chlorine reacts with organic matter to form by-product compounds called Trihalomethanes (THMs). These compounds are toxic when consumed, inhaled, or applied to the skin. Long term consumption of these compounds has been linked to liver and kidney problems, developmental disorders, respiratory issues, and cancer.
Aside from health effects, some people find that using chlorinated water for leads to discolouration of vegetables and foods cooked in it. Chlorine can also react with rubber used in plumbing fixtures and lead to leaks.
How to remove chlorine from water?
There are several methods to remove chlorine from drinking water supply: chemical neutralization, evaporation, and filtration.
However, filtration is perhaps the most efficient and quick ways to remove chlorine from drinking water. Typically, water filter systems for chlorine removal use activated carbon. These filter use adsorption process to remove chlorine, taste, and organic compounds to deliver clean and filtered water.
Activated carbon filters can be used in either whole house or point of use settings. Whole house filtration uses large amount of filter media to deliver highest level of filtration. The second type of filters are point of use filters that are usually installed under a kitchen sink. These are more affordable and replacement filters needs to be changed every 6 -12 months.
Get complete protection with Reverse Osmosis
To enjoy complete protection from other contaminants, it is recommended to use a RO System. A reverse osmosis system is a multi-stage filtration system that uses a combination of various filters and a semi permeable membrane effective in removal of nearly 99& impurities from water.
An RO system usually consists of 3 pre-filters that remove chlorine, sediments, THMs, and organic matter. At the heart of the system lies the membrane which removes fluoride, lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals. Lastly, a post filter is also added to either improve the taste of water or add minerals in the water.
RO systems are more sophisticated than standard water filter but are usually a popular option due to their low maintenance and bottled-like water quality.
The Bottom Line
The presence of chlorine in tap water can easily be identified by the aesthetic indicators such as bad taste and strong chemical like smell. And it makes total sense to remove it and improve the taste of drinking water by adding a suitable water filter.
Some of the potential benefits of an RO system include removing contaminants in addition to chlorine such as lead, fluoride, arsenic, nitrates, pesticides and more.
No matter what kind of system you choose, filtered water is a much safer option compared to tap water indian news.