Can drinking water with higher levels of chloride dehydrate, rather than hydrate you?
It all depends on the concentration of the Chlorine levels. If you took a handful of dried chlorine and put it in your mouth, it would burn your mouth. This would combine to form HCl or hydrochloric acid and this would absorb any H20 present. This would burn the lining of your mouth. Don’t try this. The levels of chlorine in normal tapwater are much lower. This will not cause problems to your gastro intestinal tract. But the pH of chlorinated water is lower than non chlorinated water. That means chlorinated water is always more acedic than non chlorinated water. The answer to your question is chlorinated water could actually dehydrate you if the concentration levels were high enough. However, this is much higher than the levels in our tapwaters. And the benefits of having the chlorine kill the bacteria and other water born parasites greatly out weighs the much smaller risk of damaging our internal organs. Next discussion will be…is floride beneficial to us in our drinking water?
