Remember the Rubber Duckie song from Sesame Street that Ernie sings in the tub? “Rubber Duckie, you’re the one, Rubber Duckie, you’re so fun…” Do kids even watch Sesame Street these days?
I’ve never had a rubber duck, but I’ve always been a water baby. I’m sure the fact that my mom had us in a pool as soon as they would let us take swim lessons has something to do with it. I loved to swim so much I would try to swim the short length of the tub with goggles on. That did not end well when my head met the tub spout.
Suffice to say, I’ve spent a lot of time in various pools and in natural bodies of water. My preference being a nice beach. The only problem is that when you’re soaking in a pool of chlorine you end up smelling like chlorine. I didn’t really worry about it too much until I moved to Southern California. After a couple of weeks, I noticed that I smelled like chlorine all the time even though I hadn’t been to the pool. The heavy chlorination of the water combined with the fact that I was taking several showers a day had me smelling like a pool!
I grew up with softened water at home and never had much of a problem, but living in Southern California really made me think about water. I started drinking bottled water because the smell of chlorine made me want to vomit. Not to mention the water was cloudy out of the faucet, which bothered me.
Fast forward a bunch of years and while moving me into my apartment here in Western New York, my mom calls me from the bathroom where she is sanitizing every surface. “Look in the tub, the water is blue!” Freaked out, I went off to buy a water filter for my shower and never took a bath.
I did some research about shower filters back then, but I figured the $20 one I picked up at Home Depot/Lowes was sufficient for my purposes and didn’t think too hard about shower water again until I started eating Paleo/Primal.
After changing how I ate, I started looking at all the different things that were affecting my health – from makeup to soap to the utensils in the kitchen. Everything came under scrutiny. I was reading that vitamin C filters were the best for getting the chlorine and the more evasive chloramines out of shower water, but I was too lazy and too cheap to bother buying a $50 filter.
Well, I just moved and the new shower head that I have didn’t work with the filter I had been using, so I went ahead and bought me a vitamin C filter. It was pricey, but I’m excited to find out whether the claims are true that the filter improves skin and scalp dryness.
Do you worry about chlorine in your shower water?
Forks in the Crossroads 