Water issues

[whiteisle]

For the last couple of weeks our water seems to have ALOT more chlorine in it. I first noticed it one night when I got a sip of water out of the bathroom faucet to rinse after brushing my teeth. Distinctly chlorine.

Later, after giving my baby his bath my hands were unbelievably dried out. And this morning I noticed my bath towel smelled like I had used it after swimming! DH called the water company this morning but they're closed today.

So I suppose the question is how might too much chlorine in the water affect my hair? :confused: We have a shower filter but I still smell the chlorine and my skin feels drier, too.

[Anje]

Hmmm... Definitely contact the water company as soon as you can.

I imagine that the increased chlorine will be drying on your hair, and could eventually even lighten it.

As a first step, you might want to make sure that your shower filter is charged, or has fresh ascorbic acid or whatever normally goes in those. If it's low, that'll make a difference.

You may also want to take some relatively drastic measures with your hair, similar to what you might do for swimming. What might be particularly useful is using chlorine-free water for wetting your hair down before washing and again for a final rinse. You could always buy the stuff, but there are easier cheaper ways to do this. Water left to stand open to the air loses chlorine over a few days. You could also get some of the chlorine-precipitating drops that people use to treat water for fish tanks (haven't tried this, but I'll bet it'll work beautifully). I believe boiling water will also drive of chlorination.

It could be that your water company has switched to chloramide rather than chlorine. I'm not overly familiar with it, but it doesn't have as much odor but persists more than chlorine. Vitamin C/ascorbic acid or the fish tank products will remove it, letting it sit will not.

[whiteisle]

Hmmm... Definitely contact the water company as soon as you can.

I imagine that the increased chlorine will be drying on your hair, and could eventually even lighten it.

As a first step, you might want to make sure that your shower filter is charged, or has fresh ascorbic acid or whatever normally goes in those. If it's low, that'll make a difference.

You may also want to take some relatively drastic measures with your hair, similar to what you might do for swimming. What might be particularly useful is using chlorine-free water for wetting your hair down before washing and again for a final rinse. You could always buy the stuff, but there are easier cheaper ways to do this. Water left to stand open to the air loses chlorine over a few days. You could also get some of the chlorine-precipitating drops that people use to treat water for fish tanks (haven't tried this, but I'll bet it'll work beautifully). I believe boiling water will also drive of chlorination.

It could be that your water company has switched to chloramide rather than chlorine. I'm not overly familiar with it, but it doesn't have as much odor but persists more than chlorine. Vitamin C/ascorbic acid or the fish tank products will remove it, letting it sit will not.

Thanks Anje for the thoughts! :) DH is going to try them tomorrow to see what's going on.

My filter is only a couple of months old so I would think it would still be functioning ok but I'll check it too. In the meantime, I might grab some jugs of distilled water to rinse with.

[BranwenWolf]

Water companies will pump chlorine in the system when they add new pipes, to clean them out a bit. Are there any new buildings where you are?

We've pretty much always had high chlorine in the water. It makes my skin itch and dries my hair a bit. I suggest rinsing with distilled water afterwards and increasing skin moisturizer and hair oil.

[flutterbudget]

I first came here because of an incident where my landlord shocked our well with chlorine while I was in the shower. Your issue is hopefully nowhere near that drastic, but you will probably want to use something to get the chlorine out of your hair. Regular washing doesn't remove it because it bonds with the hair. A chelating shampoo or treatment will help, but I don't know how much good it will do if used with chlorinated water still so you might need to find out whats going on from the water company first. Protein also helped me, as well as a lot of deep conditioning.

Good luck!