Cooking with chloraminated tap water and iodized table salt can make food poisonous, suggests a latest study conducted by a team of researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Nanjing University in China.

According to the research team, water facility officials add chlorine and ammonia to water to disinfect the water. Chlorination and chloramination, in turn, changes the chemical make-up of the water to produce chloraminated water.

When chloraminated water is used for cooking and iodized table salt is added to it during the process, hypoiodous acid is produced. The acid reacts with other organic materials and leads to production of iodinated disinfection byproducts (I-DBPs).

The Tech Times reports that some of the I-DBPs produced during the process are still not known to chemists, engineers and toxicologists around the world. Therefore, how these molecules behave is still a mystery.

During the study, the researchers simulated cooking using chlorinated and chloraminated tap water at varying temperature and time. The team gradually added iodized table salt and wheat flour to different samples of water to see what I-DBPs are produced during the cooking process.

The study, published in the journal Water Research, describes how the researchers identified 14 completely new set of I-DBPs formed during the experiment. The researchers successfully figured out the chemical structure of nine molecules and discovered that some of these were 50 to 200 times more toxic than the others.

The researchers say that limiting cooking time and temperature and using table salt fortified with iodate instead of iodide could be helpful in avoiding the potential toxicity, reports The Times of India.

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