Berkey Shower Filter Review: Why I Filter Shower Water

We filter our drinking water, so why stop there? Bath and shower water touches our skin and hair every day. I use the original white Berkey shower filter because the water we wash with deserves attention too.

The value of this filter starts with that everyday contact. It is designed to reduce free chlorine as water passes through the shower fixture, before it reaches you. For me, that makes shower filtration a useful part of thinking about our home as a whole, alongside the food we prepare and the water we drink.^[1]

Why Filter Shower Water?

Skin is a living organ, and contact with skin is one route by which certain chemicals enter the body. The air around a shower matters too. Research on tap-water exposure has measured uptake of particular compounds, including chloroform, through skin contact and breathing as well as drinking. Looking only at the water in a glass leaves out those other ways we encounter water.^[2]

Water is also part of skin care in a very ordinary sense: it is what washes over the skin before and after the products we choose. A controlled study of free residual chlorine in bathing water found that skin affected by atopic dermatitis, a form of eczema, was more sensitive to its effects on the outer skin layer’s ability to hold water. The researchers measured changes after participants immersed their arms in water containing different amounts of residual chlorine.^[3]

That is a useful reason to pay attention to bathing water when you are already thinking carefully about what touches your skin. Shampoo, soap and lotion are easy to notice because they come in labeled containers. The water running over your body is part of the routine too.

In Gut and Physiology Syndrome, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride discusses the substances we eat, breathe, touch and put on our skin as part of the overall toxic load. Her household guidance includes water, cleaning products, laundry and air. That wider view connects filtering our shower water with the care we give our food, drinking water and the other things we use at home.^[4]

The White Berkey I Use

Mine is the original white Berkey shower filter. Its main job is reducing free chlorine in a shower supplied with potable water. The manufacturer also describes reduction of hydrogen sulfide, scale and iron oxide, or rust water. It is a bathroom filter with a different job from the gravity-fed system used for drinking water.^[1][5]

The filter fits between the shower arm and the shower head. Water passes through it on the way to the spray, so it addresses the water at the place where you use it. That is the practical appeal: you can give shower water its own filtering step without treating a kitchen drinking-water filter as though it also filters the bathroom supply.

What to Know in Everyday Use

The white model’s guide calls for a compatible, flow-restricting shower head. Contact time matters to filtration, so the guide specifies a shower-head flow no greater than 2.5 gallons per minute at 60 psi. Existing ball-joint fixtures may need an adapter. Keep the original instructions with the unit when checking how it fits your shower.^[1]

It is also a consumable, rather than a permanent fitting you can forget about. The classic model is described as typically lasting 25,000 gallons or one year, whichever comes first, with water conditions, use and care affecting performance. Its backflushing method can help when flow falls; it does not turn the filter into an indefinitely reusable unit.^[1]

Those details matter because the useful purchase is a filter you can fit, maintain and replace as needed. This particular model’s purpose is free-chlorine reduction. Knowing how your water is disinfected helps you match that purpose to your own supply.

Finding the Original Model

The original white filter is the one I use. NMCL’s product list marks the classic shower filter and its supplied-head version as discontinued, so I would check the identity and availability of any remaining retail listing carefully. The chrome Inline filter is a different product with its own design and instructions. If you find a remaining retail listing for the white model, make sure it is the unit you intend to buy.^[6]

The original white Berkey instructions remain a useful reference if you already own it. You can also find the other household products I use through my Amazon Storefront.

My Take on the White Berkey

I see shower filtration as a practical extension of the care we already give drinking water. The original white Berkey is the one I use for reducing free chlorine in shower water. I value that point-of-use approach because it addresses the water before it reaches skin and hair.

If you have spent time choosing the water you drink and the products you put on your skin, it makes sense to consider the shower water too. Match the filter to the job it needs to do and keep up with its care and replacement. Reducing free chlorine before the water reaches you is the useful job this filter is designed to do.

My guide to the home changes we actually made puts water alongside laundry, dishes and personal care. For more help with choosing filters, my Water Filter Buying Guide is listed in the WFLI Shop.

References

1. New Millennium Concepts. Berkey Shower Filter Owner’s Instructions. Original white-model instructions, April 2013. Installation, flow, backflushing, media and service life.
2. Weisel CP, Jo WK. Ingestion, Inhalation, and Dermal Exposures to Chloroform and Trichloroethene From Tap Water. Environmental Health Perspectives. 1996;104(1):48–51. doi:10.1289/ehp.9610448.
3. Seki T, Morimatsu S, Nagahori H, Morohashi M. Free Residual Chlorine in Bathing Water Reduces the Water-Holding Capacity of the Stratum Corneum in Atopic Skin. Journal of Dermatology. 2003;30(3):196–202. doi:10.1111/j.1346-8138.2003.tb00371.x.
4. Campbell-McBride, Natasha. Gut and Physiology Syndrome. 2020. Detoxification chapter, general toxic load and household exposures. See my review of the book.
5. Berkey Water Systems. Berkey Shower Filter Performance. Manufacturer’s answer describing the original shower filter’s reduction targets.
6. New Millennium Concepts. Berkey Water Systems Product List. March 11, 2024. Original shower-filter listings marked discontinued.