Comments

The article says the balls are made of polyethylene, which is recyclable. It is not harmful to your health. Go look in your kitchen, most of the plastic food containers will have a recycle symbol with a number 1 on the bottom, which means it's made of polyethylene. The bromine in the water will react with chlorine to most likely form either bromodichloromethane or dibromochloromethane before it forms bromate. These are less carcinogenic than bromate. Treating the water with ozone would immediately cause bromate to form, not to mention retrofitting their treatment plant would cost millions as well. The treated water could be filtered through granular activated carbon filters to remove these bromide species before distributing it to the public, but the municipality must have determined this retrofit option to be too expensive.