The contaminants in your tap water can affect your body in a number of different ways. Not only can poor water quality affect your health when you drink your home’s tap water, but it can also affect your body when you shower, wash your hands and perform any other daily task that involves water. One common complaint that people have with unfiltered tap water is that it irritates their eyes. Today we’re going to focus on this issue by talking about how tap water can irritate your eyes and what you can do to stop it from happening!
Our eyes come into contact with tap water in various ways
The most obvious time that our eyes come into contact with tap water is when we are showering. It’s not just the water itself that makes contact with our eyes in the shower, but also the water vapor that’s produced when the water is hot.
In addition to when we’re showering, tap water also touches our eyes when we put contacts in and when we wash our faces at the sink.
Which tap water contaminants cause eye irritation?
- Hardness minerals. If your home has hard water, then your tap water contains high levels of minerals like calcium and magnesium. These hardness minerals are known to dry out your eyes, which can make them itchy and red whenever you shower or wash your face. In addition, because soap does not lather well in hard water, soap residue can get stuck in your eye and cause irritation.
- Chlorine. Chlorine is added to most public water supplies as a disinfectant. Many people report that their eyes burn and itch when they wash their face or shower in chlorinated tap water. Chlorine is also present in water vapor, which causes even more irritation to the eyes in the shower.
- Allergens. Many people have allergic reactions to certain types of water contaminants. Often times, those reactions include swelling and irritation of the eyes.
How can you prevent your tap water from irritating your eyes?
In order to prevent your tap water from irritating your eyes, you have to remove the contaminants that are causing the problem. For hardness minerals, that means installing a water softener. If chlorine or allergens are the problem, then you should consider installing a carbon filter or reverse osmosis system. Regardless of the type of system that you install, it should be of the whole-house variety. That’s because a whole-house water filtration system will filter the water at every tap, including the shower, which point-of-use systems are unable to do.
If you have any questions about why tap water irritates your eyes, or if you’d like a water system serviced or installed in your home, contact EPA Water, your water softener and water filtration system dealer in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We provide service all over Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including towns like Quakertown, Allentown and Newtown, PA.
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