Roughly one-third of Americans could be exposed to a long-sought, newly identified breakdown product of some chlorine-based water treatments.
Although the toxicity of the by-product, an electrically charged molecule, is yet to be determined, analyses suggest the substance could have several detrimental health effects. That’s a concern because in some water systems the chemical appears in concentrations above the threshold allowed for other harmful breakdown products, researchers report November 21 in Science.
“This paper’s going to cause quite a stir,” says Daniel McCurry, an environmental engineer at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles who was not involved in the research but did write a perspective on the
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