The process of treating something, especially drinking water, with chlorine to kill bacteria, viruses, and other harmful organisms.
From chlorinate + the suffix -tion (from Latin -tio), which creates nouns describing actions or states. This terminology became standard in chemistry and public health in the early 1900s.
When chlorination was first introduced in the 1900s, people were skeptical—they thought adding 'poison' to water was insane, but it quickly became the breakthrough that turned drinking water from a major disease vector into a public health triumph.
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