Don't worry if you drink US tap water. You will get Alzheimer and forget.

Chloramines: The New Super-Toxin

The new toxin we are referring to is not MTBE, the gasoline additive that is leaking into groundwater around the country, though that is nasty carcinogenic stuff. It is not the free radicals chlorine or fluoride, though they are also toxic. The latest addition to our water supply are chloramines. Created by combining chlorine and ammonia, this powerful compound is being added to more and more municipal water supplies every month in the name of "public health." Chloramines change the entire landscape of water filtration and purification because they are so very corrosive, and create a very disturbing unintended consequence.

As dangerous as they are, why do chloramines make choosing a water purification system simpler? To understand this you need to grasp why chloramines are used by municipalities in the first place. Basically, after 9/11, municipalities began adding a lot more chlorine to their water to guard against bioterrorism. The main problems with chlorine were: complaints about high chlorine levels and irritated skin, hair, and lungs; bacteria forming "bioshields" in pipes, thus resisting chlorines destructive powers; and the fact that adding chlorine to water produces carcinogenic trihalomethanes (THMs). Solution? Combining chlorine and ammonia results in a compound called chloramines, allows the use of much less chlorine and thus THMs, while creating a more potent guard against bacteria and bioterrorism. What could be the problem with this? Keep reading.

Chloramines are much more potent than chlorine alone. How much more potent? This is what concerns us so much. Chloramines are so potent that they will actually slowly dissolve the metals from your pipes! So in addition to themselves being dangerous to drink, they will raise the metals level of your drinking water. The enormous implications of that statement may not be immediately clear, so let us spell them out.

Many Americans have copper pipes in their homes. Older homes may still have galvanized steel pipes. Newer homes may use PVC or other plastics. All plumbing installed before 1986 may have joints soldered with lead-based solder. Therefore, vast numbers of Americans now are at risk for exposure to higher levels of metals, including lead, as well as plastics due to the corrosive action of chloramines in their pipes. What kinds of problems can this cause?

In the course of our research we came across three big warning signs around chloramines. The biggest came this from a paper presented to a Canadian conference on municipal water. It showed that mice and rats given chloramine-treated water that had flowed through copper pipes all developed AlzheimerÂs disease symptoms! Upon autopsy it was revealed that these animals had very high levels of copper in their brains. Some of the mice and rats were then given purified water and something equally remarkable happened  the mice recovered from their symptoms! Second, there was the case of an environmental scientist who was determined to understand why children in Washington DC were being tested with high lead levels in their bodies. Investigation showed that the chloramines in DC water were leaching out the lead from pre-1986 solder and old lead pipes, which was then consumed by the children. Finally, we are hearing reports of homeowners finding pinhole leaks in their copper pipes, apparently caused by a combination of thin copper and heavy chloramines. The implication of this is that the rest of us may be due for the same pipe problems eventually.

HereÂs the bottom line: if your water has chloramines added to it, and most either do now or will in 2007, nearly all water filters you may be inclined to use will be obsolete. This includes standard carbon filters, ceramic filters, and even basic reverse osmosis and distillation purifiers. This certainly includes so-called "ionizers" which never did much to purify water in the first place. None of these systems are designed to both take out serious toxins such as chloramines and fluoride and metals like copper and lead.