If tap water tastes or smells like a swimming pool, that's chlorine or chloramine — disinfectants your municipal utility adds on purpose to keep the water supply safe on its way to your home.
Water treatment plants add chlorine, or a longer-lasting combination of chlorine and ammonia called chloramine, to kill bacteria and other pathogens before water leaves the plant and travels through miles of distribution piping. It works, and it's required — the EPA sets a Maximum Residual Disinfectant Level (MRDL) of 4.0 mg/L for both chlorine and chloramine in treated drinking water. But effective disinfection comes with a tradeoff: a noticeable taste and smell at the tap, and compounds that can be harsh on skin and hair with regular exposure.
Built specifically for the chlorine and chloramine your utility adds during treatment — carbon strips the chemicals first, then a resin stage polishes what's left, for a noticeably cleaner taste at every tap in the house.
Learn MoreWe'll test it for free and show you exactly what a system would remove.
At the EPA's regulated Maximum Residual Disinfectant Level of 4.0 mg/L, chlorine and chloramine are considered safe to drink — they're added specifically to protect public health. The taste, smell and skin or hair irritation are quality-of-life issues, not a safety violation.
Chloramine is chlorine combined with ammonia, which breaks down more slowly — utilities often switch to it for water that travels long distances through the distribution system, since the disinfection lasts longer.
Standard carbon pitcher filters are better at removing chlorine than chloramine, since chloramine is more chemically stable. A dedicated whole-home carbon and resin system is built to handle both.