Chlorine is added to municipal water to kill pathogens. It does its job effectively. The problem is that chlorine doesn't distinguish between the bacteria in your water supply and the beneficial microbiome on your skin. When chlorinated water contacts your skin in the shower, it continues doing what it does in the water supply: killing microorganisms and reacting with biological tissue.
What Chlorine Does to Skin
Chlorine reacts with the proteins and lipids in your skin's outer layers. The stratum corneum — the outermost skin barrier — is primarily composed of keratin proteins and lipid bilayers that hold moisture in and keep irritants out. Chlorine degrades both. Daily chlorine exposure from showering strips the lipid barrier progressively, leading to moisture loss, increased sensitivity to irritants, and reduced barrier function.
The effect is most pronounced in hot showers, where higher water temperature increases chlorine volatility and skin permeability simultaneously. You absorb more chlorine through skin in a 10-minute hot shower than through drinking two liters of the same water.
Chlorine and the Skin Microbiome
Your skin hosts a complex ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms — the skin microbiome. This ecosystem is not incidental. It plays active roles in immune function, pathogen exclusion, inflammation regulation, and skin barrier maintenance. Research has increasingly shown that a healthy, diverse skin microbiome is associated with healthy skin, while disrupted microbiomes are associated with eczema, acne, psoriasis, and other chronic skin conditions.
Chlorine is antimicrobial by design. When it contacts your skin during showering, it disrupts the skin microbiome the same way it disrupts bacterial populations in water. This is one mechanism by which daily chlorinated showering contributes to chronic skin conditions — not just chemical stripping of the barrier, but biological disruption of the ecosystem that maintains the barrier.
The Homeopathic View on Chlorine
Homeopathic medicine has long maintained that chemical additives to water — including chlorine — represent interference with water's natural healing properties. Homeopathic practitioners view chlorinated water as energetically compromised, carrying the information of chemical treatment in ways that affect the body's vital force.
Homeopathic remedies are prepared in pure water specifically because the water's energetic state is considered fundamental to the remedy's action. The same reasoning applies to water used for bathing — pure water is energetically appropriate for contact with the body's largest organ; chlorinated water introduces chemical interference that homeopathic theory suggests disrupts the skin's natural healing function.
Chlorinum is itself a homeopathic remedy prepared from chlorine, used to address conditions including chemical sensitivities and skin reactions. That homeopathy has a remedy prepared from chlorine speaks to the tradition's recognition of chlorine as a significant substance requiring treatment in some individuals.
Natural Soap and Chlorine Interaction
Chlorine in shower water reacts with the fatty acids in natural soap, partially neutralizing its cleaning and moisturizing properties before it even contacts your skin properly. This is less pronounced with synthetic surfactants in commercial body wash, which is one reason commercial products sometimes seem to perform better in hard or chlorinated water — the chemistry is more resistant to interference.
Filtering chlorine from shower water before it contacts natural soap allows the soap's ingredients to function as intended. Our 15-Stage Filtered Showerhead removes chlorine and chloramines as a primary filtration function. Paired with any of our natural bar soaps, it removes the single biggest interference factor in natural soap performance.
Beyond Clean, Beyond Ordinary.