Well I’ve been doing some research into chloramine use in drinking water and unfortunately the SFPUC is talk out of both side of their mouth. On one hand it’s harmless, yet on the other it’s harmful. It turns out that chloramine produces trihalomethanes, this means a halogen element attaches it self to methane. One of these in particular is when a chlorine atom attaches it creates chloroform. This is one of the many bad things produced by chloramine use.
It also turns out that chloramine is highly corrosive and leaches lead and other heavy metals from pipes and breaks down rubber washers and a regular water filter will do nothing to remove it. On the harmful side you hear about DBP’s or Disinfectant By-Products. Take a look at some what those DBP’s are and you’ll be shocked.
I have to say though that the SFPUC is doing what it can to eliminate them, but there are better ways to sterilize water such as UV light, ozonization and reverse osmosis. Most of California is using chloramine in the water and there have also been studies done that there’s been a sharp jump in autism in California over the past 10 years. Drop autism and chloramine into google and see what shows up.
If you live in the Bay Area I highly recommend you contact the Concerned Citizens Against Chloramine.
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You have been doing your homework. There are no studies on the health effects of chronic exposure to chloramine in levels typically used in drinking water treatment, hence doctors cannot make clinical diagnosis on chloraminated tap water-caused symptoms. As a result there is an army of people in this country who are on prolonged use of dangerous steroid drugs, which are intended for use for the short term because of their toxicity. Chloramine sufferers- those who are lucky enough to have figured out the cause of their symptoms- must pick their poison: chloraminated tap water or steroids.
The reason for this rapid move over from chlorine to chloramine is comply to lower levels of what the EPA considers dangerous levels of trihalomethanes (THMs) found in chlorinated tap water. And yet THMs are also present in chloraminated water.
However, NONE of DBPs created solely by chloramine are regulated, meaning that no one is required to test for them. It is only recently that anyone is actively trying to discover them. Several of chloramine’s DBPs have been discovered since the effort was started, and they are far more toxic than chlorine’s DBPs, including nitrosamines, haloacetonitriles- and iodoacetic acids, which are the most toxic DBPs EVER discovered in chemical municipal water disinfection- they cause DNA changes. Nitrosamines, haloacetonitriles- and iodoacetic acids are not required to be tested for in municipal chloraminated water systems. Some of these are hundreds of times more toxic than THMs. And this in only the tip of the iceberg.
The first article I came across with any real information about chloraminated water was in 2006: Christopher Bollyn’s “The Unhealthy Consequences of Chloraminated Water”. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/chloraminated_water.html
Dr. Edwards was the whistle blower in Washington, DC on the hugely elevated levels of lead in the tap water due to the switch from chlorine to chloramine as a tap water disinfectant. Dr. Edwards blew the whistle to the press in 2004, three years after the switch to chloramine, after having tried unsuccessfully to get the utilities, the local health department, and the EPA to do something about it. The EPA made a large effort to discredit his work. To learn more about that, listen to his May 4, 2006 Princeton University lecture entitled “Imminent Endangerment: ‘Lead’ Astray by the EPA”.
http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/
It’s about the 38th one down the page.
Link to the CDC “study” he refers to in the lecture:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5312a6.htm
The tragedy of the cover-up by the EPA and CDC on giant lead levels in Washington DC between 2001 and 2004 is now hitting the news as people whose children’s lives were destroyed by lead are now suing: http://dcist.com/2009/02/wasa_gets_its_first_lead_lawsuit.php
Just a quick update. I’ve contacted all the local papers and TV stations about this as well as the Board of Supervisors and Mayor of San Francisco.
Supervisor Bevan Dufty wrote back to me:
“I am asking our great SFPUC General Manager for his input on this issue so
that it can help me in raising this with the Mayor of the SFPUC
Commissioners.
I look forward to his feedback.”
Hopefully something will come out of this and the SFPUC will not tell Bevan I’m just nuts.