Welcome to our pro guide on choosing the best shower filter for chloramine and fluoride removal. Over the past several weeks, we’ve reviewed and investigated just about every shower filter on the market. Our research has proven that most shower filters share the same technology and types of filtration media to remove water contaminants.
There are currently only three reliable shower filters for chloramine removal. Since more and more water utilities are beginning to adopt chloramine disinfection over traditional chlorine treatment, it’s important to know what you’re working with before you buy a filter.
If you live in an area with chloramines, you could end up buying a great filter that’s not suited for chloramine removal, and your money flows down the proverbial drain.
In this article and guide, we share the only three chloramine shower filters that we can currently recommend with confidence. After that, we share a brief buyer’s guide to help you understand how to choose the best shower filter for chloramine and fluoride removal.
We believe that as chloramine treatment becomes more widespread, more companies will manufacture shower filters for chloramine removal.
As more quality filters become available, we’ll update our list accordingly.
| Model | Features & Highlights |
| The Best Shower Fitler for Chloramine and Fluoride
#1 Propur ProMax (PM-9000C)
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| #2 Pelican Premium Shower Filter (PSF-1)
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| #3 Sonaki Vitamin C Shower Filter (SUF-100V)
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Chloramine & Fluoride Shower Filter Buyer’s Guide
In this section, we explain in greater detail how we arrived at these three shower filters and how to choose a shower filter for effective chloramine and fluoride removal.
Step #1 Test for Chloramines
The first step is to test for chloramines to confirm you need to remove them. You may also want to err on the side of caution by choosing a shower filter that effectively removes both chlorine and chloramines.
We recommend the Pelican shower filter first because it’s also one of the best chlorine shower filters on the market with an impressive 96% chlorine reduction rate.
Getting back to the point, there are two ways to confirm whether you have chloramines. The easiest way is to call your local water provider and ask them directly.
The second method is to test yourself. We recommend our directions for how to test for chloramine or watching the gentleman explain how to do it in the video below:
Why do water utilities use chloramine?
According to the EPA, chloramines are nothing new. Utilities have been using them since the 1930s. The advantage of chloramines over chlorine is they provide longer-lasting disinfection than chlorine as the water from your local water provider moves through the pipes to your home.
Chloramines are typically made by adding ammonia to chlorine to treat drinking water. Unfortunately, chlorine and chloramines are a necessary evil to keep drinking water safe. Without them, we’d be a lot worse off as disease would quickly spread through every local water supply like wildfire.
The problem is we don’t want to drink residual chlorine and chloramines once the water enters our home. Furthermore, chloramines wreak havoc on our hair, skin, and nail health due to the drying effect they have on us. When you take a hot shower, your pores open, which allows chloramines to enter.
For this reason, most people are switching to whole-house water filters or using shower filters to improve hair, skin, and nail health. The problem is most shower filters don’t remove chloramines, and a lot of the shower filters sold by fly-by-night companies that claim to remove chloramines don’t actually remove chloramines.
Transparent companies such as Aquasana manufacture quality water filters, however, they admit that their filters do not remove chloramines or aren’t tested to remove chloramines.
We recommend sticking with the three filters in our guide for effective chloramine removal.
The Best Shower Filter for Fluoride
The only shower filter we recommend with confidence for fluoride removal is the Propur ProMax shower filter. As mentioned in the chart above, we recommend steering clear of the white version because there are too many complaints concerning the showerhead thread.
Many users are learning the hard way that once it comes time to change the filter, it’s impossible to get the thing back on no matter how many rounds of Teflon tape go around the shower arm. Plus, you don’t want to rely too heavily on Teflon tape to create a seal.
The two versions below are the superior choices #ad:
Propur is the only company we’ve encountered that shows real lab test results for fluoride reduction. Other companies simply claim to remove fluoride without showing water analysis reports.
Fluoride removal is tricky to begin with, and even trickier for shower filters because of the elevated water temperature and flow rate. Activated alumina, reverse osmosis, and selective ion-exchange resin are the preferred methods for fluoride removal.
The best way to remove fluoride from your tap water is to consider installing a whole-house water filter with activated alumina. This way, you remove fluoride at the point of entry before it enters the rest of your home.
Bottom Line
Now you know how to choose the best shower filter for chloramine & fluoride and the best three options currently available. The biggest drawback to the Propur ProMax shower filter is its chlorine reduction %. It removes just 57.1% of chlorine at a .9mg/L concentration.
For this reason, we can’t emphasize enough to test for chloramines first and decide if removing fluoride from your shower water is truly that important. For optimal chlorine and chloramine reduction, the Sonaki and Pelican shower filters are the better choices.
If you want a shower filter that’s proven to remove chloramines and fluoride, then the Propur ProMax is the clear choice for you.
