Scott's Water Blog
Are Water Softeners bad for your health?
No! Water Softeners are NOT bad for your health
Water softeners are not bad for your health! Most people have heard that water softeners put salt in your water and that is not true. A Water Softener is a mechanical plumbing apparatus that removes undesirable ions of calcium hardness, iron, manganese and other positively charged constituents in a water supply by exchanging them for more desirable ions of sodium or potassium in a complex process called cation exchange.
What this means is that when hard water passes through a water softener an ion of calcium is exchanged for an ion of sodium. Salt is sodium chloride – it is the chlorides that give salt its distinctive salty taste – sodium is a metal with almost no taste at all. Sodium is also an electrolyte.
How to calculate how much sodium will be in your softened water
The amount of sodium in your water is directly proportional to the amount of hardness to be removed. Multiply 7.86 by the amount of hardness your water contains you will get the amount of sodium per liter of water. Therefore: 25 gpg hardness x 7.86 = 196.5 mg of sodium for 1 liter of water. This is about equal to the amount of sodium in one slice of white bread. When you consider that the recommended sodium intake for adults is 2,000 mg per day (most people consume allot more) and that you must drink an entire liter of water (which eliminates sodium from the body), the amount of sodium in softened water is quite small. In other words, if you eat regular foods and you are not on an extremely sodium restricted diet – the amount of sodium in your water will not be an issue and is not detrimental to your health.