Chlorinated water

A friend of mine swears salads give him palpitations. Not all salads, just those made with lettuce or spinach washed by the grower in chlorinated water. He thinks the leaves absorb the clorinated water, and rinsing doesn't eliminate all of it. He was eating organic lettuce and spinach by one of the major growers and read on their website that they used chorinated water to eliminate bacteria. After he read about the effects of chlorine, he stopped buying their lettuce. His palpitations went away.

I know there used to be a big controversy over fluoridated water, some of it hilarious (like the part about it being a commie plot), but what about chlorinated water? And leaving residue in salad?

Has anyone heard of anything like this?

When chlorinated water is used to clean and sanitize fishtanks, the great thing about using chlorine is that it dissolves completely in water so that it can all be rinsed away, and in any case chlorine evaporates from water when allowed to stand. Does it work some other way when applied to lettuce? Because if chlorine operates the same way when applied to lettuce as when applied to aquaria, any residue will evaporate harmlessly.

Municipal water systems use chlorine to sanitize the water supply, and this chlorinated water will kill aquarium fish, but the same water is perfectly safe for them if allowed to stand in an open container overnite because the chlorine evaporates in that time. I am pretty sure that lettuce and spinach is more than an overnite's distance from the processor to the table, so it does not make sense that it could still be harming your friend. That being said, your friend's palpitations could be from some contaminant we do not know about, or from some unrelated cause altogether.

All the best to you and your friend.

PeggyM

I agree PeggyM. Chlorine is such a part of our everyday life Im not sure what I would do if I had reactions to it. How does this fella drink water? It would be rough.

Taylor

I’ve heard of other people being sensitive to salad greens served in restaurants… and often because they are cleaned and rinsed in another location, then shipped to the restaurant so to maintain freshness and crispness, often other chemicals are added to achieve this. Although the practice was common at least 10 years ago, restaurants were told back then to stop using sulfites on greens to keep them fresh. It could be that it’s being done again.

Chlorine is not an innocent bystander. Check out this post on dangers of chlorine and tips to help with water supplies at home. [www.afibbers.org]

I would be curious if this sensitive person can drink restaurant water without the same reaction… or their home supply of municipal water since it is all treated with chlorine as part of the purification process. However, there could also be a sensitivity to fluoridated water which is not essential to the purification process and is a known poison and neurotoxin.

While chlorine is typically abundant in municipal drinking water, the prevalence of fluoride added to the water in various areas is also of concern because of its neurotoxicity. That would be magnified in a highly sensitive individual who may have long term exposure from drinking fluoridated water.

The post titled “Hydrate Safely – What’s in Your Water?” Might be of interest to your friend. It’s at this link although something happened to the title of the post… [www.afibbers.org]

Also, if you go to the General Health section of forum, you’ll find an abundance of posts quoting the findings of Fluoride Action Network and a reference to the documentary film, “Fluoridegate – An American Tragedy.”
You can view the full documentary here [www.youtube.com]

It’s definitely something we all should know about and especially afibbers, although the topic is often regarded with disdain since the pro-fluoridation advocates have done a really good job of brainwashing the public.

Jackie

The science here is way over my head, so in addition to the great info you posted Jackie, I went to Wiki.

According to the site: "Disinfection by chlorination can be problematic, in some circumstances. Chlorine can react with naturally occurring organic compounds found in the water supply to produce compounds known as disinfection byproducts (DBPs)."

Since I figured lettuce may be an organic compound with which chlorine might react, I read about DBPs. Pretty harmful side effects, some of which sound worse than afib. Hopefully, those are not getting into the “lettuce supply”.

Thanks very much for the information!

" I figured lettuce may be an organic compound ..." lettuce is the leaf of a lettuce plant. Its cells do contain organic compounds, too many to discern, as do all plants. But until the leaf dies, all its organic compounds are part of the leaf. They are not free to react with the environment, or with the chlorine in the water used to wash the lettuce, until the lettuce leaf dies. When the leaf dies its cells will rupture and thier contents will be released. That leaf will be in someone's stomach when that happens. Its contents will be used by someone's body to manufacture tissues belonging to the individual who ate the lettuce, whether cow or human. They will not react with chlorine in anybody's stomach. Disinfection byproducts occur in drinking water, not in foods consumed. There are things worth worrying about in our food, but i do not think that chlorination of water used to wash lettuce is one of them. Just my opinion, of course.

PeggyM

Along the same lines, see the following quote from a May 4, 1998 article in Scientific American, How does chlorine added to drinking water kill bacteria and other harmful organisms? Why doesn't it harm us?

"If chlorine kills so many species of microorganisms, why doesn't it harm humans? Fortunately, when we ingest chlorinated drinking water, food in our stomachs and the materials normally present in the intestinal tract quickly neutralize the chlorine. So chlorine concentrations along cell membranes in the gastrointestinal tract are probably too low to cause injury.

This example may simply be another case of 'dose makes the poison.' Like medicine, a little bit of chlorine, such as the levels used in drinking water or swimming pools, kills relatively simple, but potentially deadly, microorganisms. At much higher concentrations, chlorine could damage the cells in our body."

[www.scientificamerican.com]