Chloramines Clean Your Water, But Hurt Plumbing

You’ve heard about chloramines, but you aren’t sure what they are. Why are they in your water supply? Do they make your water healthier? And how do they affect your plumbing?

Every public water provider in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex lists chloramines as part of their water treatment process. The EPA states that chloramines “provide longer-lasting disinfection as the water moves through pipes to consumers”.

So what’s the verdict? Chloramines create clean water, free of harmful bacteria and microorganisms. But once that process ends, there’s no need for them to enter your home’s plumbing system. Their chemicals cause long-term damage to plastic fittings and seals, and corrode metal pipes.

Protect your home’s plumbing system and install a whole house water filtration system. You’ll prevent the chlorine and ammonia present in chloramines from harming your pipes and fixtures, and get those harmful chemicals out of your drinking water.

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Chloramines Are Chlorine Disinfectants on Steroids

Let’s start with the good — chloramines do a way better job of cleaning your water supply than regular chlorine. 

Chloramines are disinfectants formed when ammonia is added to chlorine. They’re used as secondary disinfectants to kill bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms in drinking water.

Water utility companies prefer chloramines over free chlorine because they don’t break down as quickly in water. The EPA says chloramines are “longer lasting than chlorine, making [them] useful for killing certain harmful organisms found in pipes”.

Water experts agree: chloramines kills things that can kill you

We asked Bryce Linton, President of WaterTech, for a layperson’s explanation of why chloramines are added to the public water supply. 

“The city is required to deliver water to us where contaminants in it won't kill us,” Bryce explained simply. “That’s why the city chlorominates the water. They put chemical[s] in there to kill the living things — bacteria, viruses, and cysts — that kill people the fastest.”

Regular chlorine kills less germs and creates chloroform in water

The CDC reports that chloramines have 2 key advantages over regular chlorine in disinfecting your tap water:

1. Over time, water pipes build a slimy layer called biofilm. Biofilm helps germs survive chlorine — utility companies use chloramines to kill this biofilm layer.
2. By itself, chlorine creates more disinfection byproducts than chloramines. These byproducts have fancy technical names — in layman’s terms, pure chlorine in water creates chloroform and chemicals found in pesticides.

Beyond all that, chlorine in water just tastes flat out awful. During the one month per year that the North Texas Municipal Water District (NTMWD) switches to free chlorine, their water customers can’t stand the taste. 

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Chloramine health risks are present, but not worse than chlorine

EPA guidelines state that water that contains chloramines is safe for drinking, cooking, bathing and other household uses. However, there are a few health risks to note.

Over long periods of time, chloramine exposure can cause skin, eye and throat irritation. While these symptoms are unpleasant, free chlorine creates heightened levels of all these symptoms.

Kidney dialysis patients must eliminate both chlorine and chloramines from the water supply. If either enters the dialysis machine, the NIH reports an increased risk of anemia and the destruction of red blood cells.

So yes, chloramines aren’t perfect — but they’re certainly less risky than drinking viruses and bacteria. And they’re better than using free chlorine.

Now, The Bad News — Chloramines Kill Your Plumbing

Here’s the Catch-22 about chloramines in water — for everything they do to protect your drinking water, they do just as much to destroy your plumbing.

While these disinfectants eliminate bacteria and water-borne disease, they also corrode metal pipes and degrade plastic plumbing fixtures. They’re a crucial part of cleaning up the public water supply, but they have no place inside your house.

Copper and steel pipes are corroded by chloramines

The combination of chlorine and ammonia present in chloramines is a killer for metal pipes in your plumbing system. Steel pipe corrosion occurs over extended exposure to chloramine disinfectants — and it’s even worse for copper.

Both the CDC and EPA warn that chloramines change the chemical structure of copper. This causes copper from your pipes to leach into your water supply, creating dangerous heavy metal exposure to your household.

Lead pipes near your home? Call us NOW. Chloramines cause lead to leach from pipes into drinking water — if you have old pipes, get a lead water test immediately. 

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Chlorine and ammonia obliterate your plastic plumbing components

Josh Dudley is one of our certified Master Plumbers. He’s served the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex for over 20 years, and is a local resident of Arlington, Texas.

He’s seen firsthand how chloramines destroy plastic fixtures once they enter your home’s plumbing system.

“Any kind of harsh chemical that’s used to kill bacteria in the water is going to be harsh on anything plastic or rubber in your plumbing system,” Josh says. “That includes your gaskets, O-rings, faucets and toilets.”

If You Live In Dallas-Fort Worth, Chloramines Are In Your House

Every major Dallas-Fort Worth public water utility company uses chloramines to disinfect your drinking water. All of the following water utility companies list chloramine use in their annual water reports:

• Dallas Water Utilities (DWU)
• North Texas Municipal Water District.) (NTMWD)
• Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD)
• Fort Worth Water Department (FWWD)
• Trinity River Authority (TRA)

Unless you have a whole house water filtration system, you have chloramines in your tap water if you live in DFW.

Whole House Water Filters Are Your Best Solution

Our Master Plumber Josh Dudley explains that if you want to get chloramines out of your drinking water, installing a whole home water filtration system is your only real option.

“Besides filtration, there’s not any kind of at-home remedies for improving water quality,” Josh says. “You have to take the chemicals or hardness out of the water by some sort of filter or softening — there’s no other quick fixes for city water.”

The Water Quality Association (WQA) suggests using water filtration systems with fine mesh activated carbon. These filters take chloramines and other harmful contaminants out of public water before it enters your home. 

You get all the benefits of disinfected water before it reaches your faucets — but with no pipe damage, and no gross-tasting water.

Ask us about whole home water filtration anywhere in DFW

We’ve installed quality water filtration systems for homeowners throughout the DFW area. Our plumbers only install water filters that are independently lab certified to remove chloramines, VOCs, heavy metals, cysts and lead from your water.

Chloramines did their job before they reached your house — let’s get those chemicals out of your pipes, your appliances, and your drinking water.

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