Chlorinated tap water?

[wildworld]

I'm 5 weeks and 2 days today, and am trying to keep up with my water intake.

I had been drinking bottles up until a few days ago when we ran out. I've now been drinking water from the tap (still struggling to keep up with water intake!) by filling up my water bottle, but decided last night to have a sniff of it close to the bottle rim.

I was horrified to discover that it smells kind of like watered-down bleach, if that makes sense... definitely the chlorine. Of course, the first thing I did was jump onto Google and came across horror stories claiming that chlorinated water doubles the risk of birth defects we don't even have a filter as we just moved in last month.

I'll get my hands on bottled water as soon as I can, but what about in the meantime? Anyone had any experience with this?

Thanks

 

[Linzalora]

I did some panicking about this myself, as I live in Malaysia. The study that you read indeed says "double" but the percentages are still extremely low, like 0.02%. If you drank it for a week or even every day for nine months, the odds are still very good that everything will be fine.

Getting a filter for your sink is definitely the way to go if you want to avoid as much toxins as possible, but you are still safe drinking what you have now.

Breathe easy and keep guzzling that water!

 

[ParisJeTadore]

The best thing you can do (or so I have been told) is to leave your glass (or pitcher) of water out on the counter and within 5-10 minutes the chlorine will evaporate.

If it makes you feel better I drank tap water, somewhat excessively, through my entire first pregnancy and my little boy is perfect!

 

[MrsBlueEyes]

I'm currently TTC but wanted to chime in. I highly doubt that they would put something in the water that would cause birth defects. The benefits of it far outweigh the potential negative side effects (think back 100 years). However, I try to use my Brita water filter as much as possible more because I don't like the taste of chloride. However, it's impossible to get away from tap water 100% because restaurants use it. I am cautious about drinking bottled water unless it has BPA free plastic though so that's something else to think about.

 

[minties]

I've only ever had chlorinated tap water during pregnancy, if I had to drink bottled water (which is just tap water anyway surely?) it would be way too expensive.