Boiling helps with chlorine. It does not remove chloramine. Free chlorine escapes from water as a gas, so heat and time let it go. Chloramine is made to stay in the water, and the US EPA says boiling does not take it out. Which of the two comes out of your tap decides whether the […]
Australian tap water is treated to the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines, and part of that treatment is a disinfectant: chlorine, or in some cities chloramine. A little of it is meant to still be in the water when it reaches your house. You can pick it up at the kitchen tap, but the shower is […]
Tap water carries a disinfectant on purpose. Chlorine or chloramine is left in the water so it keeps working on the trip from the treatment plant to your tap, and some of it is still there when the water reaches your shower. That is why so many people notice it in the shower. From the […]
If you have ever stepped out of the shower with skin that feels tight, dry, or slightly itchy, you are not alone. In most of Australia a daily shower is normal, and through summer it is often two. That means repeated exposure to tap water. This raises a common question: does chlorine in shower water […]
If you moved to Australia recently and your shower has felt different ever since, the water is one of the things that changed. Australia has no single tap water. Each city is supplied by its own utility, and the two things that differ most between them are hardness and the disinfectant. Sydney and northern Perth […]
Yes, and you can usually smell it. A hot shower lets more of the water’s chlorine escape into the air than a cool one does, which is why the smell is strongest with the hot tap on and the bathroom door shut. Icon Water, Canberra’s utility, says so on its own customer page: chlorine may […]
Chlorine is essential for disinfecting municipal water supplies. It protects against harmful microorganisms and keeps tap water safe. However, what makes water microbiologically safe does not necessarily make it ideal for repeated skin exposure under hot shower conditions. Chloramine behaves differently from free chlorine, and it is what Sydney’s supply is treated with. We cover […]