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Mysterious chemical byproduct in U.S. tap water finally identified
A mysterious byproduct of a chemical used to disinfect the tap water of about one-third of Americans has finally been identified, and the international research team behind the discovery is advocating rapid assessment of its potential toxicity.
The research, reported Thursday in the journal Science, does not claim that tap water containing the byproduct is unsafe to drink or that the finding represents any kind of emergency. All water, including bottled water, contains contaminants.
But the discovery of a new and previously unknown chemical, called chloronitramide anion, could have implications for municipal water systems that use a class of chlorine-based disinfectants called chloramines. For decades these disinfectants, derived from the mixture of chlorine and ammonia, have been added to many municipal water supplies to kill bacteria and prevent waterborne illnesses.
“We need to investigate it. We don’t know the toxicity,” said environmental engineer Julian Fairey, an associate professor at the University of Arkansas and lead author of the paper. “This work was 40 years in the making in terms of trying to identify the compound, and now that we have identified it, we can delve into how toxic is this thing.”
Initial computational modeling of the compound shows similarities to other chemicals with demonstrated toxicity, which “suggests that it is probably not harmless,” Fairey said.
