FYI - Brita filters and San Diego tap water, no chloramine removal

I emailed Brita a simple question: do their filters remove chloramine?

Here is the answer:
Thank you for contacting Brita.

I apologize, but Brita does not claim to remove the substance that you are inquiring about.

For more information on what substance the Brita filters remove, please visit www.brita.com.

Again, thank you for contacting us.

Sincerely,

Crystal Fisher

Consumer Response Representative

Consumer Services

I'd write back with the following:

Dear Crystal,

Thank you for your response indicating that Brita does not claim that its products remove chloramine. Do they, however, in fact remove chloramine?

Sincerely,


In fact I believe they do remove chloramine or at least used to (I did some tests 15 yrs or so ago in which they definitely did) because they contained activated carbon which does indeed remove chloramine. I found that it took more than one pass to get rid 95% or more of it as I recall.

Thought it interesting that they did not answer your question but rather gave you a response straight out of the legal department.

Yes, Brita filters should be capable of removing chloramine just like any other activated carbon filter. The problem is that chloramine does require a longer contact time with the carbon to gain that removal. I was just plowing through some of my class notes from my college activated carbon course and found a study that showed that to achieve high removal of choramine with activated carbon, the Empty Bed Contact Time had to be at least 6 minutes. What that means is that if your carbon canister had an internal volume of a gallon, that the flow rate would have to be 1/6 gallons per minute to effectively remove chloramine.

You should recognize that most filter canisters are WAY less than a gallon in volume, so the allowable flow rate would be far less than the 1/6 (one sixth) gpm calculated above. Knowing that most users aren't going to run their filter that slowly, I suppose that Brita appropriately denies that their filter works on chloramine.

I have to admit that I had been stating that a 10-inch activated carbon filter would remove chloramine when run at 1 gpm. It looks like I should revise my allowable flow rate downward when chloramines are involved.

PS: I do know that the 10-inch AC filter is quite effective in removing chlorine when run at 1 gpm.

Sorry for the bad news filter users!

Thanks for the replies guys. I do have the 1.25 gal. Brita Ultramax but it would be a pain to run water through twice x 4.

Yeah, you are right. I found that Brita filters remove chloramine and I think it is good to test them first.