Several researchers from USA and Swiss have revealed a hitherto unknown compound in chlorinated drinking water, one of the main resources that human beings need – although many people do not believe it – to survive day by day.
Inorganic chloramines are commonly used to disinfect drinking water to protect public health from diseases that affect a large percentage of the world’s population, such as cholera and typhoid.
In depth
Among other things, the work -published in ‘Science‘- has identified the chloronitramide anion, chemically expressed as CI-N-NO2, as a final product of the decomposition of inorganic chloramine. Although its toxicity is currently unknown, their prevalence and similarity with other toxic compounds is worrying.
Yes, and justifies full additional studies to comprehensively evaluate your risk for public health. Of course, the simple identification of the compound has been a challenge and a great advance, as reported by ‘Europa Press‘ on their website.
More details
“It is a chemical substance very stable with a low molecular weight. It is a very difficult chemical to find. The hardest part was identify it and demonstrate that it had the structure that we said it had”, declared Julian Faireyassociate professor of civil engineering at University of Arkansas (USA).
This, it should be noted, has included the possibility of synthesizing the compound in his laboratory, something that had not been done before. Samples have then been sent for analysis to her colleague and co-lead author of the study, Juliana Laszakovitspostdoctoral researcher at the ETH Zurich (Swiss).
Future
As expected, questions will arise both short and long term about the health risks posed by this new compound, since have not been previously evaluated in any toxicity study.
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