In A Nutshell
For filtering your bathwater these are the best bath filters:
- For filter impurities — use a two-step bath filter like the Crystal Quest Bath Filter
- For neutralizing chlorine and chloramines – add Vitamin C tablets or Vitamin C powder directly to your bathwater
The Details
Typically, 60% of the chlorine that most people absorb daily comes from showering or bathing in chlorinated water. Chlorine damages your hair and skin – you can read about the hazards of showering in chlorinated water here. Bath water also contains things like heavy metals and VOCs (volitive organic compounds). Ideally, all these things should all be filtered out.
Filtering bathwater is a similar process to filtering shower water, If you have a shower head incorporated in your bath you can use my recommend shower filters (a VitaMax Vitamin C In-Line Filter together with a Sprite HOB-CM Brass Shower Filter), and use your shower to fill your bath. This means you only need one set of filter for both shower and bath.
Otherwise, I recommend using a dedicated bath filter like the Crystal Quest Bath Filter. This bath filter has a 2-step filtration process — it features both KDF (Kinetic Degradation Fluxion) filtration (good for removing heavy metals) and Granular Activated Carbon filtration (good for removing sediment, chlorine and radon).
The Crystal Quest Bath Filter available from Amazon for around $50.
Vitamin C Tablets or Powder
Vitamin C tablets or Vitamin C powder will remove 99% of free chlorine and 99% of chloramines from shower water. Chloramine or NH2Cl (a combination of chlorine and ammonia) is now commonly being used in place of chlorine for disinfection, but chloramine is not easily removed from water. However, Vitamin C can neutralize 99% of the chloramines from water. To back this up, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission now states on their website that only Vitamin C can be used to remove chlormaines from municipal water. Here is the quote from the Commission:
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) has recently been included in AWWA Standard (AWWA, 2005b) as one of the methods for dechlorination of disinfected water mains. SFPUC and other utilities have used Vitamin C for dechlorination prior to environmental discharges of chlorinated and chloraminated water. Since ascorbic acid is weakly acidic, the pH of water may decrease slightly (Tikkanen et al., 2001). Ascorbic acid has been used for a long time as one of the dechlorinating agents for preservation of chlorinated or chloraminated water samples for laboratory analysis.
The full document can be found here.
Vitamin C tablets are slight more convenient since the some in measured amounts (tablets) and they also “fizz” to release the Vitamin C. However, Vitamin C powder is quite a bit less expensive overall.
One More Option
If you have a showerhead incorporated in your bath, you can make use of my recommend shower filters (a VitaMax Vitamin C In-Line Filter together with a Sprite HOB-CM Brass Shower Filter), and use your shower to fill your bath. However, it does take longer to fill your bath, and you’ll lose some heat from the water and it falls from the showerhead.
