At the same time, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk and Chesapeake made the same change to their city water supplies. While chloramines are recognized as a safe form of drinking water disinfection, like chlorine, chloramines must be removed from water used in kidney dialysis machines. You may need to change the way water is pre-treated for dialysis. Depending on the method of chlorine removal your dialysis machine uses now, some modifications may be necessary. Drinking chloraminated water is safe.
Chloramines are harmful only when they directly enter the bloodstream through the dialysis process.
Contact your dialysis center and complete any necessary modifications to your dialysis machine. Check with your dialysis center to find out how often they will need to see you. Monitoring for chloramine compounds in the water that has been pre-treated for dialysis may need to be performed more frequently. The chloramine disinfection process involves periodically switching back to chlorine for a few weeks. Your dialysis center will be notified before this occurs.