This morning I swapped out the filter in my shower head for a fresh one. I have been showering with filtered water for a few years now. I’m not normally too much of a health nut, but municipal water has always kind of disgusted me. I refuse to drink the stuff, mostly because of the awful taste, but also because I just really don’t trust the chemicals put into the water. (Of course, because I drink over a gallon of water per day, my coworkers often see me lugging 2.5-gallon jugs of spring water into work every week.)
…so back to showering. A few years ago, my mother had heard some radio program about the dangers of alum and chlorine added to the drinking water at municipal treatment plants. So I did some search engine research, and what I found scared me enough to invest in a filter. I won’t post any links here, but I encourage the curious to do a Google search on “chlorine” and “water.” During my own search, once I got past all of the chlorine industry lobby group sites, some of the online reports, although biased, raised enough uncertainties for me that $70 for a filter seemed a small price to pay “just in case.”
One thing that I did notice, though, is that with the filter, my hair became much softer and less brittle. I have always been spoiled by the water in my parents’ home. They live in rural Pennsylvania; they have well water; and they regularly have that water tested for toxicity levels. Before I got a filter, every time I would visit my parents, I would be surprised by how different my hair felt after a few days (even when using the exact same shampoo and conditioner). My hair would adopt such a soft, fine texture that I often could not resist touching it. Of course, once I returned to New Jersey (or North Carolina, etc.) my hair became stringy and brittle again. The other thing I noticed was how easily soap stayed lathered when I showered in my parents’ home.
So does this filtered water coming out of my shower head give my hair the same luxurious softness as Pennsylvania well water? Almost, but not quite. It’s soft, but not quite as soft. At least my hair is not as brittle as it used to be. I imagine that some of the impurities still get through the filter. To get better results, I imagine that I would have to invest in an expensive whole-house filter hooked up to my water main, but I’m not ready to do that.
Chlorine is also supposed to reduce skin’s moisture and elasticity, causing premature aging. Ack! I don’t have any facial wrinkles yet (I’m only 32), and I most certainly don’t want to prematurely add any “character lines” to my face.
The shower filter I use is manufactured by Sprite . It uses a combination of KDF (Kinetic Degradation Fluxion) and Chlorgon.
Kinetic Degradation Fluxion (KDF) is a high-purity copper-zinc formulation that uses a basic chemical process known as redox (oxidation/reduction) to remove chlorine, lead, mercury, iron, and hydrogen sulfide from water supplies. The process also has a mild anti-bacterial, algaecitic, and fungicitic effect and may reduce the accumulation of lime scale.
Chlorgon is one type of Redox filtration media…. Chlorgon converts free chlorine and some combined chlorines, such as sodium hypochlorite (liquid swimming pool chlorine), to a harmless chloride. Chlorgon also works well in a variety of temperatures from hot to cold.
This blog page by the Reactual Institute (?) lists some alternative shower filter technologies. The Korean vitamin C crystal shower filter is somewhat intriguing.
Anyway, the replacement filters cost around $18-$30 (one has to love how Google allows comparison shopping), and they are supposed to last six to twelve months. New Jersey water is so nasty that the filter becomes clogged, significantly reducing water flow, after just six months. BTW, I would love to know what it is in our water that leaves a pink, slimy buildup after just a few weeks.
Just for fun I ran my shower this morning for a few minutes without the filter, my bathroom soon smelled like a pool house. The chlorine odor is subtle, and I did not used to notice it, but it’s scary stuff since inhaled chlorine gas (chloroform) is absorbed directly into the blood stream.
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