Hard Water is a Stay-at-Home Health Hazard
The coronavirus lockdown has created a unique situation; one where millions of people are spending all day, every day at home instead of scattering to work and school for most of the day. They are spending more time indoors and, as a result, everyone is using and drinking more tap water than ever before. The tap water at home is going into home cooking, morning coffee, and homemade lemonade.
People are not only washing their hands more often, they are washing them in the tap water at home. Many people are taking more showers just to break up the day, and almost everyone has cleaned their house a few hundred times since the lockdown began.
In other words, there has never been a more important time for the health of home tap water. Today, we’re here to talk about how hard water, which has excess minerals calcium and magnesium in the water, can impact your family’s health and the solutions you have available.
Dry and Cracked Hands
Even when quarantining with family, it’s safest to keep your house and your hands clean. That means everyone is washing their hands more often and doing so for longer per hand-wash to ensure all the virus particles are absolutely gone.
In soft water, drying would be no problem. But hard water’s extra calcium and magnesium (known as scale) serves to dry out your hands faster than lotion can keep up with. Eventually, dry hands can develop into painfully dry and cracked skin.
Soap is Less Powerful
Water and soap agitated together make suds. However, the extra molecules of scale in mineral-heavy water will prevent the chemical reaction that results in both cleaning and suds. In other words, it makes it more difficult for soap to suds and, in essence, makes your soap much less powerful. You need more soap to get the job done and, worse, more scrubbing.
Difficult to Stay Hydrated
Water that is hard also tends to have a slightly unpleasant taste to it or a chalky aftertaste that is less than pleasant. It’s vital to stay hydrated while sheltering-in-place. Both for your sanity and the physical health of your family, drinking water is a must. Unfortunately, your family will not want to drink glass after glass of home tap water that tastes bitter or chalky. That makes staying hydrated a chore instead of the easy family goal it should be.
The Impact on Home Cooking
Tons of people are cooking at home right now. Home chefs are in heaven, ordering ingredients online and cooking for the family. Many first-time home chefs are also venturing into their kitchens to cook instead of ordering food for every meal. However, the unpleasant flavor of mineral-heavy water isn’t just bad for hydration, it’s also bad for cooking. Home-cooked food that uses tap water may be less presentable or enjoyable than food cooked with soft water.
Potential Health Risks of Sheltering-in-Place with Hard Water
There are several potential health risks of sheltering in place in a home that runs water high in calcium and magnesium. Your hair and skin will be impacted by the increased showers and baths at home. Your laundry will become more prone to mildew and your hydration may take a turn for the worse. With a home water softening unit, you can transform your home’s entire water system to run soft water instead of hard.
Clean-tasting, non-drying tap water is essential to your family health during lockdown conditions. Let us be the ones to help you get your home water into stay-at-home condition. Contact us today for a consultation.
