Are Chloramines Dangerous in the Shower?
This question seems to come up more often as various companies market products to remove chloramines from shower water.
Several websites want you to believe that chloramines are dangerous and need to be removed from your shower.
Truth is that chloramines are not a concern in the shower or bath tub. Here's why...
Chloramines are much more stable than free chlorine. If you boil water, or even just let it sit in an open container for a period of time, chlorine will evaporate into the surrounding air.
Chloramines are much more persistent than chlorine and have a much higher boiling point, so they don't evaporate as easily as chlorine.
This means that chloramines don't readily evaporate into the air as you shower, so one major problem with chlorine is eliminated. Many people don't notice the smell of chlorine after a shower, but if you have asthma, the amount of chlorine in the air after a shower can impact your breathing.
Because chloramines are more stable than chlorine, they don't react with your skin and hair as chlorine does.
The main reason that the EPA approved use of chloramines is that it disinfects water and produces fewer disinfection by-products than Chlorine.
Three cautions about chloramines:
1) Just because your water company uses chloramines does not mean that there is no free chlorine in the water. A shower filter can still be helpful.
2) Chloramines are dangerous to your pet fish, special care must be used to eliminate chloramines from water used for tropical fish. The same is true for chlorine, however chlorine is much more easily eliminated.
3) Water used in kidney dialysis should have chloramines removed. There are strict standards for dialysis water quality. Use only a specially designed, medical quality filtration system to purify water used in dialysis treatment.