Although the government claims our water systems are safe, some people are concerned about levels of chlorine or other contaminants in water.
Chlorine is added to kill bacteria in water pipes.
This is primarily a theoretical long-term hazard. The benefits of chlorine in preventing acute bacterial infections are well established. There have been a few highly publicized failures of municipal disinfection in recent years. The biggest was during 1993 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the parasite Cryptosporidium killed more than 100 people and caused hundreds of thousands of illnesses. This parasite is not killed by chlorine and must be filtered out.