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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>>The purification systems inadvertently stripped chlorine from the municipal tap water, allowing bacteria normally found at low levels to flourish and form biofilms inside the machines.

What is with all the hatred for Chlorine? Putting it in water is one of the great lifesavers, right up their with cooking and antibiotics. I hear people tell me about its health impacts, that it is "going to give cancer" and other crazy stuff. Well, as a former competitive swimmer, if chlorine does any harm whatsoever I am a write off. Having soaked in chlorinated pools for thousands of hours, and no doubt also drank in a not-small amount of that water, any hypothetical health impacts would have ended me decades ago. Stop filtering it.

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Two major reasons IMO:

1. Chlorine tastes nasty in water. (The correct solution IMO here is to use chloramine instead.)

2. Chlorine removal may be a side effect. Carbon filters are used to remove all kinds of nasties and/or unpleasant tastes and odors. And they remove chlorine. Carbon-filtering without removing chlorine may be difficult or impossible.

> Well, as a former competitive swimmer, if chlorine does any harm whatsoever I am a write off.

Research is mixed, but the actual danger to swimmers might not be the chlorine per se. There is some (conflicting) evidence that nitrogen trichloride and/or dichloramine exposure increases asthma risk in swimmers and in people who work near indoor swimming pools. They also smell terrible — the nasty “chlorine” smell, especially around indoor pools, is dichloramine and nitrogen trichloride.

Fortunately your tap water is unlikely to meaningfully expose you to these. You need a nitrogen source and excess chlorine, which should not exist at the same time in any substantial amount in tap water. A chlorinated swimming pool plus sweat and/or urine is a different story.

In other countries they add fluoride to tap water, which I'm pretty sure is worse; it causes fluoridosis (minerals being stripped from teeth) and may cause behavioural differences (the science is not conclusive if you google it, one of the more batshit headlines says "A chemical used to fluoridate the drinking water of 150 million Americans may foster violent behavior and cocaine use in some of those who drink the water")

They are not specifically filtering chlorine, they are just filtering the water for taste.

>> What is with all the hatred for Chlorine?

Ignorant people.

Less dickishly - people incapable of assessing risks as a spectrum alongside other risks - combined with a giant echo chamber in everyone's pocket.

Chlorine tastes terrible. And people want to drink water, not chlorine water.

It's the same people who think they need to filter water in places like America or Europe. I drink chilled tap water. Tastes great and there isn't a problem. You know what tastes gross to me? Filtered water.

You need to travel more. Many places have really bad tasting water. It might be safe but it's basically undrinkable without filtering.

I've lived extensively in America (12 different states), Canada, the UK, Ireland, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.

The tap water tasted fine in everyone one of them.

¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

The most disgusting water I taste consistently is from a plastic bottle.

In your defense, there's a big difference between room temp, tap cold, and chilled water. At room temp there is a flavor of water. Chilled with ice or a fridge mutes flavors.

If you did a blind taste test of chilled tap and "filtered" chilled water you wouldn't be able to tell a difference. Consequently, if you did the same test at room temp, you'd find both to have bad flavors.

I hate cold water (cool water is nice though). So that doesn't work for me.

Also, when you fill a pitcher of water and let it stand, the chlorine evaporates, so you don't actually like chlorine - you always make sure to remove it :)

"in places like <contintent> or <other contintent>"

We've got a water filter for one of our cats, the de-mineralization really does a number on the flavor. Some of the best water I've had came from a tap at a campsite close to a water source. Said water source was drinkable too, straight from the river.

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