What's Really in Your Water: Chlorine, PFAS, and Shower Toxins with Kinetico
With Julene Edwards, Owner of Kinetico Water Systems - Sioux Falls, SD
Your skin is the largest living organ on your body. A single 10 minute hot shower absorbs more chloramines through your skin than drinking two gallons of that same water in a day.
Shower ToxinsSioux Falls switched from chlorine to chloramines (chlorine combined with ammonia) roughly a decade ago because chloramines last longer in the pipes. Standard carbon filters do not remove chloramines. Specialty media and reverse osmosis are required.
ChloraminesIn 2016, Sioux Falls shut down 21 wells after PFAS contamination was traced to firefighting foam from the airport and Air National Guard Base. Current tested levels are below detection, but PFAS still exists in the water supply.
PFAS in Sioux FallsBoiling water does not remove contaminants. Your pasta, rice, beans, or soup absorbs the arsenic, pesticides, and PFAS from the cooking water and you eat it. Cooking water should be reverse osmosis water if possible.
Cooking WaterA water softener filters out the lime and calcium that make water hard, but it does not remove chemicals, chloramines, PFAS, or other contaminants. A softener and a filtration system serve two different jobs.
Softener vs FiltrationReverse osmosis strips everything from your water, good and bad. Adding a mineral filter puts magnesium and calcium back in. It is not mandatory, but it is a smart optional upgrade on the K5 system.
RemineralizationWhat are chloramines and why did Sioux Falls switch from chlorine?
Chloramines are chlorine combined with ammonia. Many municipal systems, including Sioux Falls roughly a decade ago, switched from straight chlorine to chloramines because chloramines last longer in the pipes and travel further through the distribution system. The trade-off is that chloramines are harder to remove. A standard carbon filter will not take them out. You need specialty media or reverse osmosis. And because chloramines are more stable, they stay in your shower water and in the vapor you breathe the whole time.
Why is my shower worse than the water I drink?
Two reasons. First, your skin is the largest living organ on your body and hot water opens your pores, so a 10 minute shower absorbs more chloramines through your skin than you would get from drinking two gallons of the same water. Second, you are breathing the steam, so chloramines and other volatile contaminants enter your lungs directly. A drinking water filter at the sink does nothing to protect you from either of those routes. Whole home filtration does.
What is PFAS and should I worry about it in Sioux Falls?
PFAS are synthetic manmade chemicals developed in the 1940s, engineered to resist heat and water. They show up in Teflon pans, Saran Wrap, waterproof packaging, stain resistant fabrics, and firefighting foam. They are called "forever chemicals" because your body cannot break them down. They are linked to liver and kidney damage, immune system dysfunction, and cancer. In 2016, Sioux Falls shut down 21 wells after PFAS was traced to firefighting foam from the airport and Air National Guard Base. Current tested levels are below detection limits, but PFAS remains in the water supply. Filtration is still the right move.
Does boiling water remove contaminants?
No. Boiling can kill some bacteria, but it does not remove arsenic, chloramines, PFAS, pesticides, or heavy metals. In fact, if you boil tap water to cook pasta, rice, or soup, the food absorbs the contaminants from the cooking water, and then you eat them. If you are cooking or preparing baby formula, use reverse osmosis water.
Is tap water safe for baby formula or during pregnancy?
Julene recommends reverse osmosis water for both. During pregnancy, anything you put in your body goes to the baby, so reducing the toxic load by filtering chloramines, PFAS, fluoride, and heavy metals out of drinking and cooking water is meaningful. For babies, the K5 reverse osmosis system can be used to mix formula and prepare cereal. Boiling alone is not enough because it does not remove the contaminants, it just concentrates them.
What is the difference between a water softener and a filtration system?
A water softener filters out the lime and calcium that make water hard. That protects your skin, your hair, your fixtures, your water heater, and your washing machine. It does not remove chloramines, PFAS, arsenic, lead, or any other chemical. A filtration system (whole home filter, reverse osmosis, or both) is what removes the chemicals. Most households need both. A softener alone is an incomplete solution if you care about what you are drinking and showering in.
Do I need to remineralize reverse osmosis water?
Reverse osmosis strips everything out of your water, the bad and the good. You will get some minerals back through food, but a mineral filter on the K5 system adds magnesium and calcium back in. It is not mandatory, and you will not be deficient without it, but for people who want the benefits of filtration without losing any minerals, it is a simple optional upgrade.
How do I find out what is actually in my water?
Call Kinetico for an in-home water test. They measure hardness (grains per gallon), TDS (total dissolved solids), and for well water they also test for iron. Annual city water reports only give you the city's averaged numbers on the day and location they tested, which can differ from your tap. Testing at your own home is the only way to know what your family is actually drinking.
If the city says the water is safe, it is safe.
A water softener also filters chemicals out of my water.
If I cannot taste or smell anything, the water is fine.
Boiling water makes it safe to drink.
A drinking water filter at the sink covers my family.
Remineralizing reverse osmosis water is a marketing gimmick.
PFAS is a coastal problem, not a Midwest problem.
JULENE But if you take a 10 minute shower every day, your skin, because it's the biggest living cell we have, will absorb more of the chloramines than if you were to drink two gallons of that same water that same day. They are cancer causing contaminants. It can cause you liver and kidney damage. It can cause your immune system to not function properly.
MELISSA In 2016, Sioux Falls shut down 21 wells after contamination was traced to firefighting foam from the airport and the Air National Guard Base. Current tested levels are below detected limits, but there is still PFAS in our water. What is that and should we be terrified?
MELISSA Wellness is confusing. There's a new trend every week. Everyone's got an opinion and half the time you can't tell what's legit and what's just good marketing. And we get it, we're in it too. Welcome to Dialed In Health. I'm Melissa Goodwin. Every episode we bring in the people who actually do this work. Providers, practitioners. The experts who see clients and patients every day. We ask the questions you'd ask if you were sitting across from them so you can find the right people, make better decisions, and feel confident about what's out there.
MELISSA When you think about health and wellness, we often think about working out and fitness and eating right and trying to stay out of the doctor's office and drinking a lot of water. But we don't always think about what's in that water. So I'm excited today to have on our show our guest, Julene Edwards, who is the owner of Kinetico Water Systems and our resident water expert. Welcome to the show.
JULENE Thank you for having me.
MELISSA So Julene, tell us a little bit. You've been doing this work with water for 25 years. What brought you into this business?
JULENE I started back in Iowa. I got started with a dealer back there. He moved to the Sioux City area and I followed and did sales and marketing for him. Then the Sioux Falls dealership became available and I thought, I wonder if I can own a dealership and operate it. 23 years strong. Water is a huge health concern for me because I know that the water you get from your tap is probably not the quality you would really want for yourself or your family.
MELISSA When people say our city water is safe, what's your reaction?
JULENE My reaction is, yes, it is deemed safe by the state and by the city. They have criteria they must follow. However, is that state guideline good enough for my health? So you take it a step further and you get that good water. All water can vary at different times of year. If a town has had a lot of rain, the water table will be higher. If there's drought, it'll be very low.
MELISSA Tell us about hard water and soft water.
JULENE Hard water is going to have your lime and calcium in it, and that's what makes up your hardness. When the city says, we have 15 grains of hardness, that's done in parts per million as well. The Water Quality Association says that any water over 10.5 grains of hardness is considered extremely hard. Anything at zero or one is considered soft water. When I go into somebody's home, we add a chemical to the water sample. When it's pink, it's hard. When it's blue, it's soft. I add a titrant drop by drop, and for every drop, that's one grain of hardness per gallon of water. So if you have 15 grains and you use a thousand gallons, you have 15,000 grains of hardness going through your pipes, your fixtures, and your skin.
JULENE Hard water is tough on your skin. Kind of makes it itchy. It is very difficult with hair. Fixtures corrode up with lime and calcium. You may have to clean the screens in the faucets. You'll see streaks on shower doors. Washing machines and water heaters burn out a lot sooner without soft water.
MELISSA Where does our water come from, and what ends up in it?
JULENE You're taking water especially from the river, so you have all those contaminants that can end up in that water. Pesticides, arsenic in some places, all these metals you aren't thinking about. The city is only going to chemically remove so many things and then they send it to your home. So you're cooking your pasta with arsenic and pesticides in it.
JULENE Years ago when I first came here, Sioux Falls used straight chlorine. About 10 years ago they decided to go to chloramines. A lot of people don't realize how that's made. They add chlorine, then they actually add ammonia to get chloramines. Their statement is that it lasts a lot longer in the water and goes further. But in your showers, this is in medical books. If you take a 10 minute shower every day, your skin will absorb more of the chloramines than if you drank two gallons of that same water that same day. And that's not even mentioning that you are breathing while you shower. All of that goes into your lungs.
MELISSA What about the annual water quality reports? It looks like we're passing everything with flying colors.
JULENE Those are put out by a committee and directed by the EPA. But their standards are not what I want for myself and my family. I want the best I can have.
MELISSA Arsenic. How worried should I be?
JULENE Arsenic is a naturally toxic metalloid found in the crust of the earth. It's found in our water, but also in the foods grown for us to consume. Rice, green beans, carrots, corn, peas. They are planted in soil, watered, and the plants absorb the metals. It's carrying out into your home.
JULENE Chromium is different, it's a metal found in stainless steel manufacturing, industrial welding, and textile dyes. Wherever they make clothing, they use dyes that have chromium in them. Same with fabric. That's why a lot of fabric has a smell to it.
MELISSA What about PFAS?
JULENE Yes, I'm concerned myself. PFAS is a synthetic manmade chemical. It started back in the 1940s. It's made to resist heat and water, so it's in water repellents, plastics, the packaging you use like Saran Wrap, the plastic they wrap meat in at the grocery store, Teflon pans, water bottles. The plastic leaches right into the water. All of these things are cancer causing contaminants. They are called forever chemicals because there's no way to get it out of your body. It can cause liver and kidney damage and immune system dysfunction.
JULENE Lead is a problem we see, and very toxic for your body. Too much fluoride and aluminum, research shows, is found in the brain cells of Alzheimer's patients. You need to get fluoride out of your water if you can.
MELISSA If you're a parent mixing formula with tap water, is that safe?
JULENE I would say not with all the contaminants in the water. Several families have contacted me, can we use reverse osmosis for baby formula. Absolutely, you need to use that. Same for cereal. You do not want to put all those toxins into your baby.
MELISSA What about boiling? People think boiling cleans it.
JULENE No, because when you get it boiling and put your pasta in there, it absorbs all of the contaminants into that pasta. That's what you put into your body. Same with a cake, jello, soup, coffee, tea. You're just putting contaminants right into your food.
MELISSA What does a water softener actually filter?
JULENE A water softener filters out the lime and calcium, which make up your hardness. It will not take out anything else as far as chemicals or drinking water contaminants. It gets the lime and calcium out, which protects your hair, skin, appliances, and fixtures. For contaminants you need filtration or reverse osmosis.
MELISSA What about remineralizing reverse osmosis water?
JULENE Reverse osmosis strips everything out of your water, good and bad. The K5 has a mineral filter you can add that puts magnesium and calcium back in. It's not mandatory, but it's a good thing when you can put it back in. You won't get all your minerals from water, but you do get some.
MELISSA For people on well water or in small towns, what do they need to know?
JULENE We treat everybody the same. Hardness test, TDS (total dissolved solids) which tells us contaminant level, and for wells we always test for iron. Sioux Falls is different from Tea or Harrisburg, and actually Sioux Falls differs from one side of town to the other.
JULENE A city tests for grains of hardness about every month. My tests are always different than theirs because it depends on where they took it and on what day. If you want the best quality water, you need to be testing at your home, not relying on the city report.
MELISSA Federal guidelines haven't been updated in 20 years. Even if city water is "passing," those standards are old.
JULENE Correct. So if you want the healthiest water, get your home tested.
MELISSA Tell us how to reach you.
JULENE We are located at 401 South Minnesota Avenue in Sioux Falls. Call us at 605-339-3434. Our website is kineticosiouxfalls.com.
MELISSA Thanks for being on the show, Julene. Something we don't think about often, but really important if you care about your health and wellness. Get your water tested.
MELISSA Hey, that's our show. If someone came to mind while you were listening to this, please share it with them. Just hit the share button. You never know what one conversation, one episode, or one piece of information can do for someone who's been looking for answers. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do it now. It takes two seconds and means you won't miss an episode. If you're a health or wellness provider and want to be on the show, there's a link in the show notes to get in touch. Thank you for being here. I'm Melissa Goodwin. The line is open. See you next time.