The Martian Brain Flu

[foxgrrl]

I wanted to go to Yoga practice tonight, but I've been sneezing all day (with sore throat, simultaneously dry and runny nose, etc.) So, rather than just infecting everyone in the class with whatever virus this is; I nobly stayed home and screwed around on LiveJournal instead… er, I mean I nobly sacrificed my Yoga practice for the health and safety of others.

I was fighting cold off pretty well last week, but then I went skinny dipping with a bunch of bisexual witches, in the redwood forests near Santa Cruz, in the [unseasonably] freezing cold [28°F], this weekend.

But, this reminds me that I haven't written a health update for several months…

My biggest breakthrough was the discovery that they use monochloramine to sterilize the tap water around here. Chloramine binds to hemoglobin, acting like a nitrite to induce methemoglobinemia; Which explains why every time I took a shower, I showed all of the symptoms of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, except that the CO detector never goes off. It kills fish if used in their aquariums, and many zoo animals need it removed from their water… But it's completely safe for humans!

Since moving back to California in 2004, I had noticed that every time I took a shower, I seemed to get sick. Mostly a really fatigued dazed brain-fog, weakness, dizziness, and coughing up clear mucus. Sometimes an, "OMG why can't I stand up!" laying on the floor panting for an hour while my hands and feet turn blue. I went to a few doctors, and they kept telling me that this is "Stress", that I'm stressing about going to work, and that I was hyperventilating (or having panic attacks). Despite the fact that if I didn't take a shower I would feel find, until I did, and would need to lay down, barely able to think. And also, this happens on the weekend, and before things I really really want to do, and I get upset that I can't move my body, to get up, and go do them. Also, that when I travel to other parts of the country, I don't get sick after taking a shower. (And I know several other people around here who have noticed the same things happening with them.)

[Repeat story about switching anti-depressants every month for my stress– none of them worked.]

All of this led me to believe that it was something present in the bathroom shower. My first hypothesis was that it was black mold, or even just mildew, as the first bathroom where I noticed this was covered in it. After practically remodeling two bathrooms in two different apartments, there was still something knocking me out. Of course, no one I told my suspicions to - about sickness related to the shower - took me seriously. I'm just a crazy stressed out woman! (Switching back and forth between male an female presentations, I can tell you for a fact that no one pays any attention to what you say when you're female. [Another rant about that later.])

Then one day, while arguing about ionic compounds or something with Nyah; She made an off hand comment about the chloramine in the tap water here killing fish. I did some research (see above), and some experimentation.

There is a window, in the shower, of my current bathroom, in just the right spot that I can stick my head out of it to take a breath, while in the middle of showering. So that's what I did; And the very first time I took a shower, and inhaled none of the fumes [steam] from the shower, I felt great afterwards. None of the common dizzy weakness I had suffered almost every day for two years.

So, this is how I've been showering since October — sticking my head out the window, and then holding my breath. My hit-points have been steadily going back up, and I've been putting my life back together, now that I don't feel deathly ill all the time. If I accidentally inhale too much steam from the shower, or one of my roommates takes a shower, and fills the house with deadly shower gases, the weak-tired-dizzy-panting-for-air symptoms return. (I really need to install a filter on the water line here.)

Oh, and to all those people who told me that I was a hypochondriac: fuck you.

Comments

[dymaxion.livejournal.com]

Wow, I had no idea it could have that strong of an effect. There are a whole bunch of chlorine-removing shower head filters on the market; I'm guessing they might be what you need, and they don't require a complicated installation, just swapping out the showerhead.

Nope!

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Chloramine isn't even remotely affected by most Chlorine-removing gear, because it's not 'free' chlorine. Chloramine is completely bound up with the ammonia, and a moderate perusal doesn't show any method of safely and easilly removing the chemical that's not expensive. It specifically will rapidly wear out most of the filter types that actually remove it (reverse osmosis for example usually gets nuked by it, carbon filters do diddly to it) which is driving most aquarium-owners nuts.

Boiling doesn't remove it either, it just pumps the toxic fumes into the air. And make no mistake, the chemical is most definately toxic. And when not in solution, will basically self-explode in higher concentrations due to the way it decomposes.

The only 'usable' methods of removing the junk that I know of, and that Wikipedia describes, is (amusingly) dumping a bunch of regular chlorine in, to get the chloramine to break down into it's two component parts, wait a day for the resulting ammonia to off-gas in the dark, then put the container of water in sunlight or boil it to get the chlorine to off-gas.

Re: Nope!

[dymaxion.livejournal.com]

Ok, serves me right for making assumptions about the chemistry instead of actually looking it up. Looking online, I'm seeing somewhat similar things, although activated carbon followed by reverse osmosis seems to be relatively effective, assuming that you're careful to replace filters as soon as you get pressur drop, instead of waiting for effects on throughput. I'm also seeing suggestions (particularly for dialisys patients) to use ascorbic acid. I know that you can purchase ascorbig as based shower filters. This, especially if used in combination with the other two filter types, might do some good.

Re: Nope!

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

What I've seen is the opposite, actually. RO then Carbon, since the Carbon'll take out all the odd chemicals running the Chloramine-contaminated water through the RO can generate as the RO suffers from accelerated breakdown.

I hadn't run across the ascorbic acid idea though, good to know.

Re: Nope!

[dymaxion.livejournal.com]

Hrm. At least one of the municipal water boards was advising carbon then RO, but it seems like it's all a bit of a clusterfuck. Certainly, some variation of that combination, if kept well maintained, can reduce concentrations from the 2-4ppm levels commonly seen (4ppm being the EPA limit) to <0.1ppm, assuming good enough filters enough filter capacity relative to flow rate (sufficient carbon contact time being the relevant factor). Ascorbic acid is commonlyl being suggested for dialysis patients, and therefore seems like it might be an ever more thorough cleaner, although I haven't seen numbers there. There are some total and free chlorine meters available at relatively reasonable ($30) prices through the aquarium industry, so that may be the way to go -- buy a meter and at least one of each filter, and test all the different iterations and see what works.

Re: Nope!

[vintage-fish.livejournal.com]

Reverse osmosis or deionization will remove chloramine, but are exorbitantly expensive for "whole house" units that would handle things like shower water, etc. These are really only feasible for folks like fish geeks that like to preserve their aquatic life and only need small units. Fish geeks have other chemical and non-chemical means of "fixing" the chloramine issue, but it freakin' SUCKS. A LOT.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that, too, but I thought it was just that I was overheating from being under the hot water too long.

[foxgrrl]

Yeah, for a while I thought that it was low blood pressure, or that I was too hot or to cold.

[ephermata.livejournal.com]

Wow. I'm glad you finally figured out what the problem is. I hope you keep feeling better! (The paranoid part of me wonders if there's more than one cause, but it sounds like you're doing much better, so hopefully not.)

[rialian.livejournal.com]

===The filtering shower heads are quite helpfull...I know they work for chlorine..(you might have noticed when you were at my home that I have one on the upstairs shower.)

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Bizarre. @.@ And yet hopeful. Results are results, and maybe I'll find out my problems are just as simple someday... Definitely thinking it's time to get out of this nasty soggy old apartment building.

Congratulations, glad you're feeling better!

[trema-slo.livejournal.com]

This is an amazing telling. I wonder what type of filter you can get that will work?

[vintage-fish.livejournal.com]

ACK! You poor thing!

I've been an aquarium hobbyist for nearly two decades.... I deal with chloramines on a hate-hate basis every single day.

Chloramine is basically chlorine and ammonia bonded together.... Forgive me, I don't have much of a chemistry background to offer much beyond that. Anyhow, for fish, this means a LOT more badness than just simple chlorine. Chlorine will evaporate from water. A tub of water set out to aerate will lose its chlorine in a day or so. But chloramine does not evaporate. Worse, when you use a chemical (like "Prime", "Stress Coat", etc.) to break the chloramine bond to make it safe with your fish, you end up with free ammonia in the water! That's as bad as chloramine! So we have to use yet another chemical to neutralize that, or "age" the water in a large tub where you've already got a colony of nitrifying bacteria established....

A nightmare!

The fix? A good quality reverse osmosis unit, like those from http://www.airwaterice.com . I think airwaterice has a "whole house" unit, which would "fix" this problem with your showers, as well. The downside is that a whole house RO unit is exorbitantly expensive, and the "waste" water from it would be immense. So if you're conscious about not "wasting" water, this route might not please yah. On a many-fish-tank level, this is the only "right" or "best" way to go, but then we only need just a little unit to give us some fifty or hundred gallons per day, once every week.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

I'm really, really, really pleased you found a solution.

If I ever find one I'll let you know ;)

[porcelaingirl.livejournal.com]

That would explain a lot, but I'm not sure if they do the same thing to water around here...hrrm...may need further investigation. Thank you muchly for bringing this to my attention!

*hug*
Catie

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Figuring out a source for this kind of problem is wonderful. Because now there's a defined problem you can try and do something about.

(geeze, a combination of chlorine and ammonia? In tap water? How many times do we get told to never mix chlorine and ammonia cleansers because it produces poisonous gas?!?)

[chirik.livejournal.com]

Very fascinating.

You were much worse than I am, but I feel some of the same symptoms.

When I spent a month in Thailand, I felt positively wonderful. I attribute it to the lack of stress around me, but ... maybe it was more than that?

[harlkyn.livejournal.com]

Just do a search for "chloramine reduction filter" on Google and you get all kinds of stuff.

Catalytic Granular Activated Carbon CGAC made from Bituminous Coal is the most effective means of removing chloramines. High quality carbon block filters also remove Chloramines but CGAC is the most effective. The catalytic reduction capacity of all carbon filters is greatly reduced by chloramines as opposed to chlorine. This reduced capacity makes some carbon filters almost useless for chloramine reduction. CGAC followed by RO and DI seems to be the best non-chemical intensive method of treating chloramines. We have put together an array of filters, which we consider to be the best solution for chloramine reduction. - http://www.thefilterguys.biz/chloramine_filters.htm (as an example)

[centauress.livejournal.com]

I always said you /acted/ like, not that you were a hypochodriac. You just have the worst luck with health.

We've switched to a carbon filter on the shower, and it does seem to catch the higher bursts of clorine that were sometimes noticable. (And helps Sammi keep her hair color longer) In Sunnyvale, they publish quarterly the water treatment and source composition if you want to track that sort of thing.

Might be able to counter the cloramine by putting plants and lights in the room as well - they'll raise the O2 level, which would lower the ratio of -O gasses free in the air, which I always found counteracted the effect.

Of course, I always was a stickler for airflow - I even replaced the fan in the Evelyn house.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

You may want to glance at my LJ post. For the record, I am one of the people who did believe you.

[akashayi.livejournal.com]

Stab the people that provide your water in the face. I immediately want to investigate LA's water supply.
How do they get away with putting in clear health hazards in the water? How does that get past whatever codes are in place?

(Switching back and forth between male an female presentations, I can tell you for a fact that no one pays any attention to what you say when you're female. [Another rant about that later.])
For future rants, I know what you mean! I usually like to disassociate with both genders (and probably act much closer to a guy anyway) but I'm tempted to try to present just 'male' so people will take me seriously.

At the same time, I get a lot of "why are you trying to be a guy"? It's so frustrating!

How do you get by?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_harbinger_/]

I just ordered a shower filter from here. They claim that the ascorbic acid in their filter removes chloramine, and the price tag is pretty reasonable. The newts and toad have been fine with water from a regular carbon filter and SF switched to chloramine in 2004. But I guess the chloramine hasn't been going directly into their bloodstream the way it would with gilled critters.

More Mountain View Chloramine Information

[vintage-fish.livejournal.com]

Hi Julia, please take a look at this:

http://www.mv-voice.com/story.php?story_id=2656

I also live in Mountain View, and because of my fish geekery, things like this are important to me. T.R. sent me the link, and I remembered your problems with chloramine; maybe the City of MV needs another complaint added.... Seems to me if enough folks report issues, maybe something can be done. Yikes.