_Colic._ Although claims have been made that the consumption of
chlorinated water has produced "colic" no corroborative evidence has
been adduced and the symptoms have probably been due to some other
cause. Dilute solutions of chlorine have been used as intestinal
antiseptics in the treatment of typhoid fever without producing
irritation of the mucous lining and the usual dose for this treatment is
one grain of chlorine. Before taking a _medicinal_ dose of chlorine 140
gallons of water containing 0.1 p.p.m. would have to be consumed, a
quantity greater than is ordinarily drunk in a year.
Chlorine and hypochlorites are destructive and irritant to skin and it
is possible that hot chlorinated water has, in some instances, a similar
effect.
It is inconceivable that the addition of minute traces of bleach or
chlorine to water should cause it to extract abnormal amounts of tannin
from tea but it is possible that free chlorine, when present, acts upon
the tea extractives and produces compounds having obnoxious tastes and
odours. Tannin to the ordinary tea drinker represents the disagreeable
portion of the tea and an obnoxious taste in tea brewed with chlorinated
water would consequently be ascribed to the extraction of abnormal
quantities of tannin.
Almost all waterworks departments using chlorination have received
complaints to the effect that the water had killed fish and small birds.
There is usually no evidence that the loss was due to chlorinated water
but it is generally impossible to convince the owners that the process
of water treatment was not the cause. Many continuous physiological
tests have been made of the effect of chlorinated water on small fish
and have shown that the concentration used in water treatment is without
effect. The author kept a tank of minnows in one of the pumping stations
for months without loss although the tank was continuously supplied with
water that had been treated but a few seconds previously. The bleach
solution was discharged into the suction of the pumps and the water for
the fish test was taken from the discharge header.
It has been found on many occasions that fish are extremely susceptible
to chlorine and hypochlorites. This knowledge has been sometimes used
for such nefarious purposes as fish poaching, a few pounds of bleach in
a small stream being a simple and most effective method of killing all
the fish which are then carried down stream into a convenient net.
Chlorinated sewage effluents have also been known to destroy the fish
life of the stream into which they were discharged.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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