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Haloacetonitriles (HANs)

Haloacetonitriles (HANs), we filter that.

Halogenated acetonitriles (Haloacetonitriles or HANs) are a disinfection by-product produced during water chlorination or chloramination from naturally occurring substances, including algae, fulvic acid and proteinaceous material. In general, increasing temperature and/or decreasing pH have been associated with increasing concentrations of halogenated acetonitriles.

Health Effects

Epidemiological studies have looked at the associations between exposure to disinfection by-products in drinking water with cancers, adverse birth outcomes and birth defects. Meta-analyses and pooled analyses of these studies have demonstrated consistent associations for bladder cancer and for babies being born small for gestational age, but not for congenital anomalies (birth defects). Early-term miscarriages have also been reported in some studies. The exact putative agent remains unknown, however, in the epidemiological studies since the number of disinfection by-products in a water sample are high and exposure surrogates such as monitoring data of a specific by-product (often total trihalomethanes) are used in lieu of more detailed exposure assessment. The World Health Organization has stated that "the risk of death from pathogens is at least 100 to 1000 times greater than the risk of cancer from disinfection by-products" {and} the "risk of illness from pathogens is at least 10 000 to 1 million times greater than the risk of cancer from disinfection by-products".

Disinfection by-products are present in most drinking water supplies that have been subject to chlorination, chloramination, ozonation, or treatment with chlorine dioxide. Many hundreds of disinfection by-products exist in treated drinking water and at least 600 have been identified. The low levels of many of these disinfection by-products, coupled with the analytical costs in testing water samples for them, means that in practice only a handful of disinfection by-products are actually monitored. Increasingly it is recognized that the genotoxicities and cytotoxicities of many of the disinfection by-products not subject to regulatory monitoring, (particularly iodinated, nitrogenous disinfection by-products) are comparatively much higher than those disinfection by-products commonly monitored in the developed world (TTHMs, HANs and HAAs).

At Epic Water Filters, we have tested for the most toxic disinfection by-products HANs & TTHMs.

Filter Removal Rates

Pure Filter: >96%

Nano Filter: >96%

Everyday Filter: >96%

Outdoor Filter: >98%