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.