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Monday Mission: The Water that Gets You Clean

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Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to get the chlorine out of your bath and shower.

If you have city water, it’s almost certainly treated with either chlorine (aka bleach) or chloramine for sanitizing purposes. Since I don’t like using bleach as a cleaner in my home, consuming it in drinking water isn’t high on my list.

Someday soon we’ll have to talk about filtering your drinking water when I finally get my filter, but for now, let’s talk skin.

image image

images from Radiant Life; this post is sponsored by Radiant Life

As your largest organ, one of the skin’s jobs is to absorb. That means that anything that goes on your skin, as I discuss in this natural personal products master list, also goes into your body. It’s like eating your lotion, soap, shampoo…and even the water you bathe in. Check this out from the Radiant Life website:

Did you know that by putting your fingers for 15 seconds into an ordinary glass of municipal tap water you absorb over 80 percent of the chlorine into your body? Imagine how much chlorine you absorb in a 10 minute shower! What’s more, chlorine is not only absorbed by your skin, but inhaled from the steam and spray, where it goes directly into your bloodstream.

Yuck.

We’ve had a chlorine-filtering attachment on our shower for about two years now. They’re not super expensive (mid-range, I’d say) and are very easy to install and upkeep. I have a reminder in my Google calendar to flip it over every few months to extend the life of the filter and then to install a new filter once a year.

When I take a shower elsewhere, I can often really smell the “chlorine pool” smell in the hot steam now that I don’t have it at my house.

What to Look for in a Shower Filter

First, check your city water report to see if your municipality uses chlorine or chloramine. The latter is MUCH harder to filter out (see below). If you’ve got chlorine, start researching shower filters. Look for:

  1. Easy to install
  2. Easy to re-order filters
  3. Run price analysis, but read the small print – how long will the filter last and how much do replacement filters cost?
  4. Will it work with your showerhead?

I don’t know that I can recommend a certain brand, as I’ve only tried one (and it’s packed up in a 10×20′ storage unit right now, so I don’t even know what it is). I will say that the one downfall of my filter, which may be true for all of them, I’m not sure, is this: it takes 10-20 seconds for the water temperature to adjust when running through the filter. Annoying.

Radiant Life, a KS sponsor, sells two filters for you to start your search with:

  • Rainshow’r Filter (pictured above) – lasts about a year, filters cost half as much as the unit itself, easy to order through Radiant Life
  • New Century Shower filter – lasts about 18 mos., a few bucks more expensive than the rainshow’r, but I don’t know where to find replacement filters UPDATE: Ah, I get it now. The housing is sealed, so the whole thing gets replaced every 18 mos., no filter replacements involved.

Do you currently use a shower filter? Do you have a favorite brand or source?

What About Baths?

Immersing my kids in chlorinated water isn’t my favorite thing to do, even though we swim in it in the summer. (Interesting conversation about chlorinated pools and alternative options here.)

We simply use the shower with its hose to fill the bathtub, but I admit it takes about five times as long to get a bath ready. Typically the kids are still undressing and whatnot, but every so often it’s pretty annoying to wait.

An option for baths that sounds a lot less complicated is a Crystal Ball Bath Dechlorinator (pictured above). You simply run the bath water through the ball then swish it around a little in the bath afterwards. For me, another bonus of that system is portability. You could bring it along to grandma’s house for a week’s vacation…or 3 month stay. Winking smile

Since my kids have sort of sensitive skin, it makes me feel good to keep extra chemicals off their bodies, hoping to stave off eczema and dryness. Of course, when winter comes, the eczema did start flaring up again…

Do you use a bath filter? Have you noticed any benefits?

It Gets Trickier…Chloramine

imageI’ll be checking out my new city water when we move into our new house and crossing my fingers that they use chlorine, not chloramine. The only way to filter out chloramine that I can tell is an uber-expensive whole house filter – yikes! Perhaps technology is changing – a quick Google search for “chloramine shower filter” did yield some results. The filters are larger and have two sides, compared to the one I have and pictured here. Hmmm…anyone have experience with these?

The advantage – you don’t have to purchase and maintain separate filters for each individual bath or shower in your home.

The disadvantage – definitely not portable, and expensive. Still needs further filtering for truly high quality drinking water.

Radiant Life does offer the whole house filters, so if you’re interested in looking into those systems, I’m happy to introduce you to Norm and Kathy over there, and they can help you find the best choice for your needs.

Well Water

If you’ve got well water, you shouldn’t need a special chlorine filter. You get a “bye” this week for the Monday Mission. Check out the full list and see if there’s one you missed that you could tackle this week, or focus on water anyway: store some water for an emergency without using chemicals OR get your water tested to make sure there’s nothing nasty sneaking into your house through the pipes.

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Need More Baby Steps?

Here at Kitchen Stewardship, we’ve always been all about the baby steps. But if you’re just starting your real food and natural living journey, sifting through all that we’ve shared here over the years can be totally overwhelming.

That’s why we took the best 10 rookie “Monday Missions” that used to post once a week and made a printable checklist so you can track your progress.

checklist of baby steps to real food

Sign up to get the checklist and weekly challenges and teaching on key topics like meal planning, homemade foods that save the budget (and don’t take too much time), what to cut out of your pantry, and more.

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30 Bites of Conversation So Far

  6. We have a Sprite shower filter and it seems to work well. Although after this post I realize I should check our water company to see what they use. Our water is so bad! You fill up the bath tub and it smells like a hot tub! Right now we just have the shower filter and use it to fill up the kids’ bath but of course that takes forever. But as my son deals with eczema it’s a must. Before the filter his skin/scalp was awful, now it’s back to normal….well till winter and then he’ll dry out a bit again.

  7. Our house came with one in one bathroom (though I’m sure the filter needs to be changed) and we just put a new on in the remodeled upstairs bath. Just have to remember to fill the tub with the shower head for our little guy. Ours is strong enough that you can smell the difference right away!

  8. YES! I use one. My skin really needs the help because chlorine dries me out like an alligator. When we moved into our current house, we found that the water turned one of my daughter’s hair bright orange when it’s unfiltered. Rust, I assume. We have filters on all showerheads and change them twice a year.

  9. I have one of those shower filters on our shower too. They work great to keep the chlorine and toxins from your skin.

    I have a special site where I like to write on health topics of all kinds; healing diet, maximum weight loss, inspiration, and exercise. I would like to do a free guest blog post for you if you are interested.

    I look forward to hearing from you,
    Janet

  11. You can purchase a KDF filter (that removes Chloramine) from most hardware stores. They typically attach through the sink and the drinking water will come out of another hose. My husband and I have a Kangen Water machine in our kitchen that we use for drinking water and an Anespa filter in the bathrooms for the shower and bathtub. Bye, bye chlorine and chloramine!!!

    • The only thing that I didn’t like about the bath ball was that you have to swish it aroud in the water for at least 5-10 minutes or maybe longer for it to work. It goes back to the whole it takes longer. It did seem to remove the chlorine smell.

  13. Just checked my water…took a total of 30 seconds on the company website to see we have chlorine.

    thanks for the info!

  14. We have a shower filter at home and it makes SUCH a difference! Showering without one at any point makes me feel like I’m in a gas chamber with all those noxious chemical fumes that are sent directly to my brain when I inhale the steam.

  18. I looked into these when we bought our Berkey Water Filter (which we LOVE). We ended up not getting one, but the chlorine in the city water really bothers me..especially after growing up on country well water! We hope to move back to the country someday soon – but the near future is still up in the air!

  20. I have eczema & I HAVE to have a shower filter or my skin wants to kill me. I can totally tel the the difference when I take a shower & the water isn’t filtered/is chlorinated. Yuck!
    pools are also a big no-no for me, but thankfully my condo complex usesan extremely low amount of chlorine in combination with alternative water treatments so I can actually swim in it without breaking out. 🙂

  21. thanks for the encouragement i don’t know why i didn’t think of using a shower filter plus hose for bath times! i guess i was a little discouraged about the bath balls b/c i read they take a couple minutes to work; ie you are sitting there with a tub full of hot water for five minutes before you can get it….totally upsets my bathtime ritual (you know where the running water drowns out the sound of screaming children, haha). but i didn’t really think of the portability factor, that is so worth it. i want to try both.
    has anyone heard of VITAMIN C shower filters? supposedly they work really well, are inexpensive, and i wonder can i just put vitamin C tablets in my bath and will that work?? any thoughts???

  22. I am researching the Vitamin C filters and they sound too good to be true…their description made it sound like they will remove ALL the chlorine from your water, give you the vitamin c you need, and even do your laundry! Okay, not the laundry part…but it read as too good to be true. I hope someone can prove that wrong…I am four months postpartum here and to be frank my thinning and dandruffy hair could use the help…we are thinking about going with the Sprite High Output shower filter and the Rainshow’r Crystal Ball…they seem like the best ones for the money.
    Does anyone know of bathroom filters with recyclable cartridges? We already have unrecyclable kitchen sink cartridges, and I was hoping not to add to the pile, but I think throwing away that one thing every few months is better than having all that chlorine…still if there’s a recyclable option out there I’d pick that one.

    • Kate,
      Oooo, that’s a good question. I don’t know about recycling… but at least the shower filters last a whole year, not just a few months.
      Katie

  23. After reading this post I did lots of research and finally just ordered a sprite filter for showers, and am planning to get vitabath’s vitamin c tablets for bath time. Thanks for waking me up to this! I hadn’t even thought about this toxic exposure.

  24. We have a shower filter! However it doesnt filter out flouride, but due to the fact that most flouride added to water is actually toxic waste, a flouride filter probably doesnt get it out either!

  25. Slightly off topic, but have you ever read A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr? It made me really like the idea of water filters even though it deals with events that happened decades ago.

  26. We now have a whole-house carbon filter, and Reverse Osmosis for drinking water. Makes a huge difference in how the water smells and tastes, so that tells me a lot of crud is being removed.

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Please remember that I’m just a gal who reads a lot and spends way too much time in her kitchen. I’m not a doctor, nurse, scientist, or even a real chef, and certainly the FDA hasn't evaluated anything on this blog. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please talk to your health professional (or at least your spouse) before doing anything you might think is questionable. Trust your own judgment…I can’t be liable for problems that occur from bad decisions you make based on content found here.

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