"Phantom chemical" identified in drinking water is new to science

16 pointsposted 2 days ago
by Brajeshwar

4 Comments

From the article "I agree that a toxicological investigation of this anion would be useful now that we know its identity, but I am not overly worried about my tap water,” says Oliver Jones, Professor of Chemistry at RMIT. “The compound in question is not newly discovered, just newly defined. Its presence in some (not all) drinking waters has been known for over 30 years."

Chloramine has been in broad use for over a hundred years and this breakdown byproduct was well documented over 50 years ago and detectable in water over 30 years ago. What the article is claiming as new, or a "Phantom" is that someone imaged its particular molecular structure and is now requesting funding to run toxicology studies on it. There is no current reason to believe that it is harmful since tens of millions of exposures have not indicated any reactions to it over the past hundred years.

BenjiWiebe

a day ago

It seems like NewAtlas articles are always sciency clickbait of questionable accuracy.

NotGMan

a day ago

>> There is no current reason to believe that it is harmful since tens of millions of exposures have not indicated any reactions to it over the past hundred years.

When you look at the state of health in the world nowadays I'd have to disagree: at least one of these "no harmful" substances that we ingest is killing us.

Smoosh

20 hours ago

>> state of health in the world nowadays

You mean with people having longer lifespans than ever before?