Kids are taught in their Geography classes that almost three-fourth surface of the Earth is covered in water. It is only one-fourth part on which the human beings and other living beings survive. So, does that mean you will never have the scarcity of water any day?

To your ultimate surprise, 97% of the total water on earth is salt water and less than 3% is freshwater. Saline or salt water is water with high concentration of salt. Salt water is unfit for drinking and different daily uses.

What is Hard Water?

In simple words, Hard Water is the water that is rich in mineral contents such as calcium, magnesium, salt, and many others. This happens because water comes from oceans, and these minerals deposits are found on the ocean's beds.

Groundwater turns hard as it flows over or through limestone. While hard water does not pose any serious health risks as such, but it can surely become a nuisance in daily life.

Harmful Effects of Hard Water on Your Child’s Skin

There are several noticeable harmful impacts of hard water on your child’s skin. Here are some of them that you should be aware of.

• Dry and Flaky:

Hard water contains a high amount of sodium and related minerals that makes the skin extremely dry. It is due to the dry texture of the skin that it becomes even flaky.

Many children also complain that their skin feels itchy.

• Acne and Spots:

Due to minerals in the water, it cleanses the skin of natural oils, leading to acne breakouts. When the residue of these minerals sits on the skin, this causes several marks on the skin.

The problem of Acne can become quite severe in teenage, and hard water only makes it worse.

• Damaging Healthy Skin:

A child’s skin is too soft and fragile to bear the harmful effects of hard water.

The water's minerals also break down the soft skin's natural collagen that exposes the skin to the bare sun. This causes damage to healthy skin cells.

Harmful Effects of Hard Water on Your Child’s Hair

Hard water does not just have harmful effects on the soft skin of children but can also damage their hair drastically. Here are some of the ways how hard water damages their hair.

• Dry and Frizzy hair:

As the hard water minerals make the skin look dry, it does the same thing to your li’l ones’ hair. This happens due to the sodium and other minerals in the hard water. The hair loses its natural oil content and gets really dry. If you continuously use hard water, it will give their hair split-ends and make the hair look really frizzy.

• Lifeless and Brittle:

Sebum oil is the natural nutrient of the hair that keeps it healthy and free from any problems. But when it is lost, the hair loses its natural luster. Not just the hair loses its beauty but also loses its other essential properties. The hair becomes too lifeless and brittle. This only leads to an extreme amount of hair fall. If your child has been losing strands of hair every now and then, you should indeed check your water once.

What's the Solution?

As hard water and its mineral contents are harmful to the skin and the hair, it has to be avoided. Thus, it gets exceptionally crucial to find a solution for this problem. Here are some of the solutions that you can consider.

• Boiling the Water:

One of the ultimate ways is to boil the water for 20 minutes to half an hour at extreme temperature and rest. As it gets cold, the minerals start sitting in the bed of the container. Slowly remove the clear water, leaving the mineral dumps below.

• Using Hard Water Softener:

A hard water softener is the most effective, but a little expensive way to get rid of your hard water woes. Most of these hard water softeners for home work on the principle of ion exchange.

The ion exchange water softeners use some form of resin media (sodium chloride salt or brine) to make the water physically soft. In ion exchange, hardness causing calcium and magnesium are replaced with non-hardness ions like sodium.

You won't see any visible difference in hard or soft water, but you'll feel a noticeable difference to your skin and hair. Hard water softeners can do wonders for people suffering from eczema, dry skin, hair-fall, dandruff and other hard water-related conditions.

• Using  a Shower/Tap Filter:

A shower filter is a cheaper and easy to use alternative to the ion-exchange water softeners. These tap/shower filters easily connect to your bathroom's tap or shower head. Once installed, these small but highly effective filters considerably reduce common hard water constituents like calcium, limescale, and chlorine from hard water.

Today, there are several tap/shower filter options available to get rid of hard water problems. Getting the right shower filter can help you eliminate the water's excess minerals that make it hard and harmful for usage.

Almost 85% of the world is hard water. But it is not suitable for health and hence is not usable. Getting hard water treated in the right ways is the only way to use it for various purposes.