One Major Side Effect of Making Your Tea With Tap Water

If you fill the kettle with water from the sink and heat it to make tea, this may surprise you: Scientists found a chemical interaction

Biochemistry and environmental science researchers from the U.S. and China published a study in Environmental Science & Technology. 

The researchers found that when boiled tap water is used to make tea, the small quantity of chlorine

added to clean it reacts with tea components to cause "disinfection byproduct exposure."

We add chlorine to drinking water for 'disinfection.' Chlorine reacts with organic materials in drinking water during this process. 

The experts who did this study realized that chlorine may be in your tea as most include beneficial compounds.

They tested tap water on Twinings green tea, Lipton tea, and an unknown Earl Grey tea to find this impact

Thus, they say: "In many cases, measured [disinfection byproduct] levels in tea were lower than in the tap water itself."

Tea samples with regular chlorinated tap water had 12% higher disinfection byproducts. Dichloroacetic acid, a component in certain drugs,

 chloroform, which the CDC says can cause liver and kidney problems in big doses, were byproducts.

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