I recently wrote about Filtering Your Drinking Water Very Efficiently, but let us turn now to your shower water. When we shower, we absorb the substances dissolved in water through our skin quite readily. For example, as much as 60% of the chlorine you absorb daily comes from showering in chlorinated water. The chlorine is absorbed directly from the water and from the chlorine gas released into the air.

Ideally, we would filter out all the undesirable chemicals from our shower water. However, unless you have a whole house water filter, this is not possible. This is because filtering water at the showerhead is problematic — the water moves fast, making filtering difficult, and the water is typically hot, which is also undesirable for filtering. (more…)

Recently, municipalities around the world have begun to use
chloramine (a mixture of chlorine and ammonia) to disinfect water. This
is done to reduce free chlorine’s ability to combine with organic matter
in the water thereby producing potentially harmful trihalomethanes, or
THMs. Because chloramine has less disinfecting ability than free chlorine,
a higher concentration of chlorine is usually used to get the same bacteria
kill rate. Yet chloramine’s harmful effects are the same
as pure chlorine, so the hazards while showering are greater.

Carbon has long been used to absorb
impurities and is perhaps the most powerful absorbent known. Activated
carbon is carbon which has a slight electro-positive charge added to it,
making it even more attractive to chemicals and impurities. As the water
passes over the positively charged carbon surface, the negative ions of
the contaminants are drawn to the surface of the carbon granules.

Activated carbon filters are usually rated by the size of the particles
they are able to remove, measured in microns, and generally range from
50 microns (least effective) down to 0.5 microns (most effective).

The most common carbon types used in water
filtration are bituminous, wood, and coconut shell carbons. While coconut
shell carbon typically costs 20% more than the others, it is generally
regarded as the most effective of the three.

Advantages:

• Good filter for improving taste and odor, chemicals and some cysts.

Disadvantages:

• Bacteria can multiply in filter
• Doesn’t last long with hot water
• Doesn’t perform well at high temperatures,
  needs other technologies to work as shower filter.

This bath filter removes 90% or more of free chlorine, improves lathering with quartz crystals.

You swirl in the bath water for a few minutes, for filtration to occur.

Available from: Natural Baby or Ebay