Chlorine Talk: Pools

A few posts ago, I mentioned that chlorine is toxic. I believe it is high time that that mentioning was expanded upon.

Chlorine is an atom found naturally throughout nature, usually a part of a larger molecule, like salt. It's also used heavily by man, in anything from corrosive agents, to disinfectants, and even weapons.

The one thing people think of most often when chlorine is mentioned is swimming pools. Chlorine is being used as a disinfectant to kill off bacteria and pathogens in this particular case. It does this by breaking down into hypochlorous acid and an hypochlorite ion. Both of these substances attack the lipids that hold cell walls together, resulting in the death of the cell. Imagine the cell as a tent, and the lipids as the poles that are holding that tent up. Once you remove those, the tent collapses. Luckily for us, our skin cells aren't quite as vulnerable to chlorine, even though it isn't exactly good for you. Oftentimes, chlorine is supplemented or replaced by chloramines, which kill off pathogens in almost exactly the same way, but are in a more stable form. This is seen as superior to pure chlorine (often called free chlorine) as free chlorine tends to evaporate before killing off much bacteria. As good as this sounds, chloramines are even more irritating to the human body than free chlorine is. Anybody who has gone swimming in a few different chlorine pools can tell that there are slight differences in the color of the water, the intensity of the smell, and how irritable the water is; these differences are due to difference amounts of chloramines being used by different pool owners.
My personal opinion is that chlorine pools don't necessarily need to be avoided, just be sure to shower afterward. Even diluted, chlorine and it's byproducts are pretty harsh chemicals. That's why your skin gets dry and your eyes red after a long swim.

 For those of you who own a swimming pool of your own, I recommend you switch to a copper ionizing system, which is often bundled together with a salt water system. A copper ionizing system works by running water from the pump between two copper plates that have a low electrical voltage running between them. This process is called electrolysis, it's the same thing that made the Statue of Liberty green (That's right, green wasn't the original color). That electrical current causes a small amount of copper ions to mix in the water. This copper is toxic to pathogens and algae, which keeps your pool clean. Don't worry, copper isn't toxic to humans or animals, not unless consumed at enormous levels that wouldn't ever be caused by the little bit of electrolysis that occurs in a pool system.

Salt water systems are often advertised as chlorine free filtration systems. This is completely untrue. As I mentioned before, chlorine is found naturally in salt. Salt water systems merely extract the chlorine needed from salt dissolved in the water. The salt merely acts as a sort of stabilizer, as the filter only takes as much as is needed to clean the pool. A salt water filter is better than a traditional chlorine system just because it only uses free chlorine without any chloramine added. The free chlorine levels found in a salt water pool are usually much lower than the concentrations in a traditional pool anyway. Without having a decent stabilizer (like salt) to keep the chlorine in the water, pool owners have to dump more chlorine in their pool to keep it clean.