Best Shower Head Filters of 2024
Many countries, including the US, have extensive guidelines in place to ensure that the harmful chemicals in your water and overall water quality are researched and regulated.
In the US, the EPA has legally enforceable standards for all different types of contaminants in your drinking water, as well as secondary concerns that can cause skin irritation or damage your hair. Your local water supplier should conduct a new Consumer Confidence Report each year, and the EPA has a public database designed to make it easy for you to look up the latest tap water report for your area. You can read the report and see if there are any contaminant levels in your water that are of concern, but you can also rest assured that if there are any water contaminants that exceed the legal limit, your community will definitely be notified.
If you’re particularly concerned about lead, an easy way to reduce that risk is to simply let your tap water run for a few minutes before using it. The most dangerous levels of lead accumulate when water sits in your home’s pipes overnight, so flushing that water out of your pipes will put you in a better position.
Lead and chlorine in drinking water
Even if your water smells and tastes great, that doesn’t mean your tap water is free of harmful chemicals. Water contaminants fall into several categories, but the main concerns in your shower water are toxic metals, chlorine (used as a disinfectant), and the byproducts that chlorine creates with other chemicals in the water. Any of these can seriously ruin your shower experience.
The main toxic metals that often hide in water are arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury. These metals all prevent the water from circulating properly. World Health Organization Top 10 List of “chemicals that pose a significant health risk.”
The lead from the affected pipes can end up in the drinking water and cause all kinds of public health problems.
Lead is often considered the biggest pollutant culprit, even if your water supply is clean, water slowly corrodes the lead in your home’s plumbing systems and leach the toxic metal into the water. Children are at particularly high risk from harsh chemicals and have been reported to absorb up to 50% of their lead through drinking water. Even at relatively low levels, WHO reports, lead exposure can cause irreversible neurological problems. Therefore, water quality should always be taken into consideration.
Another important problem has to do with the chlorine that is disinfectant in our drinking waterThe biggest health concern is actually the byproducts that are created when chlorine reacts with natural organic material in the water, creating harmful chemicals that THMs. You’ve probably heard of chloroform, which is just one common THM, and high levels of THMs act as carcinogens.
One study found that people absorbed more THMs from a 10-minute shower than from drinking a liter of water. If you are concerned about this, a shower filtration system that actively removes chlorine may be helpful.
