Water Quality | All about Chloramines

Chloramine has been used as an alternative to chlorine for water treatment and disinfection. It is used to reduce the number of byproducts created when disinfecting water as compared to chlorine. 

What is Chloramine?

Chloramine is a disinfectant that consists of five parts chlorine and one part ammonia. There are three common types of chloramine: monochloramine (NH2Cl), dichloramine (NHCl2), and trichloramine (NCl3). Chloramines are disinfectants that can affect your water’s taste and quality. As with Chlorine, Chloramines breakdown during the transit from water company to your home. It makes sense to filter your drinking water to reduce the chloramine content.

How does Chloramine get into your water?

Chloramine is added to your water supply by the local water systems to disinfect the water. Chloramine is less likely than chlorine to breakdown.  It stays in the water system longer. This means that it is present in your tap water.

Does Chloramine have an odor and taste?

Yes. Chloramines are all composed of chlorine, they exhibit that distinct chemical odor and taste that many choose to filter from their water supply.

Is Chloramine harmful to your health or your water pipes?

Besides being an irritant, Chloramines in water are most concerning for kidney dialysis patients. Chloramine can also cause corrosion of copper or lead pipes, affecting the quality of your  water supply.

How to remove Chloramine from your water supply

Chloramines are used to treat water to remove microorganisms that can cause infectious diseases. Chloramine removal at home isn’t 100%, so one can only reduce the concentration to a level that will let your family consume refreshing water. Some options.

Boiling water is one method for reducing chloramine from your drinking water. 

Active carbon filters which are very common in water filtration products can reduce the concentration of chloramines in your tap water and the general taste and odor associated with chloramines. 

Recommended water filters for Chloramines

It is increasingly becoming essential to filter water we consume. The best water filtration systems that reduce Chloramine concentration in your drinking water based on Reverse Osmosis [RO] technology. These systems also reduce or eliminate the majority of contaminants like microscopic level compounds, bacteria, viruses, chlorine, chloramine, lead, and microorganisms. These are available as counter top or under the sink models. The filtered water is ideal for drinking and cooking.

Some owners believe that a RO based water purifier is expensive to maintain. However with proper monitoring of the system it need not be expensive. The TDSBot makes your RO System smart. It monitors water quality in real time, alert you for changes in quality, gives predictive maintenance alerts and most important it lets you know when to change filters based on water quality and volume of water filtered.