How Safe is Your Shower?

A recent series of scientific studies have confirmed that your morning shower is not the most innocuous pleasure of the day. Scientists have learned that we absorb as much or more synthetic volatile chemicals from the water we shower in daily than we receive by ingestion of the same type of water daily from food and drinking water. Tow studies are considered here.

• Professor Julian B. Andelman, Center for Environmental Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburg, PA, reported in the scientific journal: The Science for the Total Environment, that roughly 60^ more chloroform and trichlorethylene can be absorbed by the body in the shower than is absorbed from ingesting drinking water for that day. To prove this, he constructed a model shower in his lab, and introduced these two volatile chemicals into the shower head set at different heights and at different emperatures. When the hot water mixes in the shower with the cold water, the volatile chemicals are driven off into the air and, of course, breathed into the lungs. In the lungs, the blood barrier is only one cell thick so the chemicals gain immediate access to the blood stream.

• The role of skin absorption of volatile organic contaminants (VOCs) was reported by Halina S. Brown, Ph.D., et al in the American Journal of Public Health. They found a direct line relationship between the concentration of volatile chemicals in water that were in contact with the skin, and the concentration of those same chemicals in the blood stream immediately after exposure. This is quite understandable when we realize that the skin is the largest organ of the body and is composed of lipid membranes that are indeed permeable to volatile chemicals.

What Does All This Mean To You And Me?

Chemical companies constantly affirm that a little chemical poison does not hurt us, but why expose ourselves unnecessarily. A practical device is available which can be placed on the shower to markedly reduce these contaminants. It needs no plumber to install, it operates for years, and you can't believe how much more you will enjoy your daily shower - especially if you happen to be sensitive to chlorine.

Clinical ecologists have learned that the more you are exposed to chemicals in your environment, the more quickly you become sensitive to those same chemicals. After a time of continuous exposure, persons can reach their threshold level for that contaminant and thereafter evidence certain characteristic symptoms which will appear more and more often. Again prevention is the safest route to follow. Don't allow yourself to become sensitive to chlorine or any of the chlorinated by-products from municipal water.

Test Your Water

To those who rather doubt that this is a truth at all let us recount an experiment that is conducted in Ozark's Water Service's laboratory occasionally. Anyone can do this for themselves.

Take a glass of water from the faucet after it has been running a few minutes. Test the water in the glass for free chlorine residual. The value that Ozark received for water in Sulfur Springs, Arkansas was 1.11 parts per million free chlorine. Then hold your fingers in the glass of water for 15 seconds, and test the water again for chlorine. You will be amazed to see the difference. Ozark's value was 0.19 PPM chlorine. That calculates to a decrease of 82.9% chlorine for just 15 seconds contact. The few fingers have about 1/100th the surface area of the whole body that is exposed in a shower situation, so you can readily understand why Dr. Brown and her colleagues reported these findings in the Journal of the American Public Health Association. Something to think about the next time you swim in a chlorinated pool or take a chlorinated shower.

How Can I Test My Water?

Nature's Sunshine offers a R.O.P.E. Test Kit for $2.50. Order the R.O.P.E. test and fill it with your tap water. Then follow the directions to mail the water sample to Ozark Water Service in Arkansas.

What Device Were You Talking About That I Can Use In My Shower?

Reference: Ozark Water Service Newsletter

Please send E-mail to: iridology@netzero.net if you have any questions.

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