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The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency all but dismisses chloramines as a serious health threat. But don’t tell that to a local group that sees the water-supply disinfectant – a combination of ammonia and chlorine – as dangerous and life altering.
Los Altos area-based Citizens Concerned About Chloramine (CCAC) earlier this year convinced the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) to request that the EPA conduct studies on skin, respiratory and digestive reactions to chloraminated tap water. The SFPUC controls the Hetch Hetchy water system, which supplies water to 26 Bay Area cities, including parts of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills.
Experts consider chloramine a more effective disinfectant than the standard chlorine. Although the compound appears to have no ill effects on the majority of the population, some claim to have had severe reactions.
Menlo Park resident Denise Johnson-Kula said she reacted in February 2004, shortly after Hetch Hetchy water was chloraminated. After showering, she experienced asthma and skin rashes.
She identified chloramines as the cause after discovering that the water in Morgan Hill, which uses chlorine, had no ill effects on her.
In June 2004, Johnson-Kula founded CCAC, a non-profit organization whose mission is to “raise the public’s level of awareness about chloramine and its health effects.”
The SFPUC resolution lists “several hundred cases” in the district, and notes that no agency, ... has conducted studies to determine chloramines’ effects.
The EPA notes: “Chloramines have been used by water utilities for almost 90 years, and their use is closely regulated. More than one in five Americans uses drinking water treated with chloramines. Water that contains chloramines and meets EPA regulatory standards is safe to use for drinking, cooking, bathing and other household uses.”
Those claiming reactions to chloramines said they are compromised every day.
Longtime Los Altos resident George Popaduk, 80, said he moved out of town specifically because of his reaction to chloramines.
Joseph Yang, a Gunn High School graduate, said he suffered from the chloraminated water.
“I began to develop progressive eczema, covering from head to toe,” Yang said. “My eyelids were swollen, my jaw was inflamed, even moving my arms or legs hurt because of the severity of the rashes.”
Yang’s symptoms began when he used the water at UC San Diego and continued when he returned to Los Altos.
It wasn’t until he stopped using tap water to drink and shower for nearly three weeks that Yang realized it was the water that caused his symptoms.
“I tried using all kinds of filters, but my symptoms never went away,” Yang said.
Now he uses purified water for showering and drinking, and his rashes have mostly disappeared.
“This definitely should have been studied carefully before it was put in our water,” he said. “It was completely unethical and reckless to make this change to chloramine without any definitive evidence that it would be more effective than chlorine.”
Johnson-Kula said her group’s efforts to curb chloramines are starting to pay off.
“I have recently been in communication with some scientists at the EPA who are very interested in chloramines’ health effects,” she said. “As a result, designs for health studies on chloramines are being discussed and considered by EPA researchers. The symptom data and information that CCAC has gathered over the last five years is critical input. … I have been asked to provide that input.”
For more information, visit www.chloramine.org or call Johnson-Kula at 328-0424.
NOTE: The California Water Service Company is changing its treatment process from chloramines to free chlorine for a two-week period, beginning this week. Cal Water officials said the change is to allow system maintenance and inspection of Santa Clara Valley Water District facilities.
For more information, call 917-0152 or visit www.calwater.com.
17 Comments
17Comment
at Wednesday, 05 May 2010 08:49
What did people with eczema from the additives in our water do to get rid of the horrible symptoms? I live in Mountain View and I have endured the itching, burning, cracking, dry hands for two years. Doctors have given me cortisone, steriods, UV burns, every lotion known to man. Nothing helps. Other than washing my hands with spring water, what else did these people do that helped?
16Comment
at Tuesday, 13 October 2009 14:59
Wow! It's such a relief to know I'm not the only one and to know there may be a real culprit to my sudden skin rashes and hives which my doctor discounted as seasonal allergies. My husband and I moved to Los Altos a year ago and I have been suffering ever since. A friend moved in with us a few months ago and she is also experiencing rashes on her arms that she's never had before. WHAT can we do to get this changed??
15"CA resident"
at Monday, 05 October 2009 22:16
Based on my 50 years experience, I believe it is not so much whether the additive is Chlorine (gas) or Chloramine (solid chemical), is it the quantity used.
San Francisco delivered water from Sierra Nevada mouontains is acceptable most of the year until they increase the quantity of disinfectant in the rainy season to neutralize the excessive surface water run-off carrying e-coli materials. Other cities do not put nearly as much in as does S.F.
14Comment
at Thursday, 24 September 2009 10:55
Thanks for the explanation. My daughter's eczema is now completely gone. It's amazing. It's like she never had it (but she never had it THAT bad). But I believe we're going back to chloramine very soon. I'll see what happens. I never thought it could be the water!
13Comment
at Wednesday, 23 September 2009 17:12
Thank you for publishing this article about chloramine. It help Citizens Concerned About Chloramine (CCAC) to get the word out that our water can be toxic to many people. I too, suffer from the effects of chloramine with respiratory and digestive problems. Thank you again for your article.
12Comment
at Monday, 21 September 2009 16:23
I live in Pennsylvania and a large group of people here have been fighting for two years to keep chloramines out of our water. To say that chloramines are a better disinfectant than chlorine is simply false. It is a known fact that chloramines are hundreds of times less effective than chlorine at killing bacteria and retroviruses. The EPA has a responsibiilty to everyone to completely test any chemical that we are forced to be exposed to. They really dropped the ball on chloramines.
11Comment
at Monday, 21 September 2009 16:23
Chloramine is posion. It almost killed me. I could not go out in sun for I would burn instantly, My vision was blurred, and any form of light felt like someone was sticking pins in my eyes, my skin peeled and dried out. I felt like someone was choking me could not swallow. I was wheezing. Always tired and I ached all over. I was dying and and losing my sight and no doctor knew why. I got out of the chloramine and within 2 months my vision came back and other symptoms slowly disappeared.
10Comment
at Monday, 21 September 2009 16:21
After switching from drinking bottled spring water to my city's tap water (Concord, NH), I began to experience severe digestive problems, including heart burn, stomach pains and prolonged constipation. This went on for 10 months until I switched back to bottled spring water. ALL of my symptoms went away. Since I was skeptical that it could be the water, after a month of no symptoms, I tried drinking the tap water again. ALL of my symptoms came back. Chloramine has no place in public water!
9Comment
at Monday, 21 September 2009 16:21
It's not the chlorine that has aggravated the eczema problem, it's the changing between chloramine and chlorine that makes something happen chemically. It also happens the other way, I believe, brace yourself when they change backt to chloramine
8"East Bay Resident"
at Monday, 21 September 2009 16:19
The EPA does not have much credibility on their pre-study assumptions which they have been presenting as gospel. Remember this is the same group of bureaucrats whom denied any risks in the use of MTBE as a gasoline additive in spite of hard evidence presented by American Medical Association and others. Kudos to CCAC for getting EPA to at least consider a study.
7Comment
at Thursday, 17 September 2009 14:48
MomE, Normally, a utility that uses chloramine adds chlorine and ammonia to the water in the right ratio so that most of the chloramine formed is monochloramine (NH2Cl). When a utility switches from chloramine to chlorine -- or from chlorine to chloramine -- during the transition the water in the distribution system is a mixture of the two. In that mixture, the ratio of chlorine to ammonia favors creating more dichloramine (NHCl2) and trichloramine (NCl3), which are even more irritating than monochloramine. Also, the utility could have changed the concentration of the disinfectant. (Is your water utility California Water Service Company, which gets its water from Santa Clara Valley Water District?) You could contact CCAC for more information.
6"Mr."
at Thursday, 17 September 2009 10:58
Thank you for publishing this article about chloramine. I hope it gets more people thinking about chloramine as a possible source of their skin, respiratory and digestive problems, if they suffer from any of these. I endured severe skin problems while living in Los Altos. Since moving to the Coachella Valley in California about a year and a half ago, my skin problems have cleared up entirely, and I no longer have to use bottled spring water for drinking, cooking or bathing.
5Comment
at Thursday, 17 September 2009 10:57
Interesting article. My water supply here switched from chloramine to straight chlorine because the ammonia tanks had to be inspected. My daughter already had eczem), and there is a family history of it (her father and I). But when the switch to chlorine happened, it was HORRIBLE. Her eczema flared up, and she refuses to drink the water. So she\\\'s getting dehydrated. Do those of you with eczema not find that chlorine aggravates the condition, I\\\'m curious?
4Comment
at Wednesday, 16 September 2009 22:39
Thank you for your enlightening article about cholramine. It is important to know that the combination of chlorine and ammonia is toxic to many people and fish. All of our 40 fish died when our overflow pump in our backyard pond did not work, allowing fresh water into our pond for two days. When we called Cal water to ask their opinion, they said that we should have known that chloramine kills fish! If we know it kills fish, we must learn how it affects humans if we continue its use.
3Comment
at Wednesday, 16 September 2009 22:45
Hundreds of us have the same symptoms here in VT since chloramine went into our water. Can’t be a coincidence. It’s an outrage EPA says chloramine is safe for all uses. No health studies on skin, respiratory or digestive effects have ever been done, nor any epidemiological studies on chloramine, yet studies in industry show people with the same symptoms we get. It’s not a better disinfectant, it stays in the water longer is all. It’s the least effective one allowed by EPA for municipal water!
2Comment
at Wednesday, 16 September 2009 22:45
Chloramine has been in my Vermont municipal water since 4/06. The grassroots citizens group, People Concerned About Chloramine (PCAC), was formed after people began suffering respiratory, skin and digestive reactions shortly after the switch to chloramine. By now, hundreds of people have reported the same symptoms to PCAC that people in the Hetch Hetchy water system are experiencing. Yes, there are people in VT with severe skin symptoms such as described by Mr. Yang. We have our share of people
1Comment
at Wednesday, 16 September 2009 22:43
Thanks for publishing this article about chloramine. I too, suffer from the effects of this chemical and had to stop using tap water because of serious eczema. Neither my dermatologist nor my allergist was able to diagnose the cause of the problem, and only after I took a look at www.chloramine.com did I realize what was going on. I hope your readers who have unexplained skin rashes, or respiratory or digestive distress will take a look as well.
Beth Nord, Palo Alto
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