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Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)

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Re: Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)

#181

Post by calebegg »

deepGem wrote: post #51
sizzzzlerz wrote: post #12

I've always wanted a product that you could add to the swimming pool water that reacts to human urine by coloring the water immediately surrounding the pee-er. Say a neon orange or red. Over time, the colored water gets diluted and disappears. Maybe pee-shaming is what's required to stop people from doing it.

Gosh this is not gonna go well with the public. I know several kids who just can't hold pee in the pool. They'll just let it out. Also its not like the toilets are right there. You often have to get out of the pool, walk like 100 yards or down a flight of stairs. It's a PITA. Even Michael Phelps once said in an interview that very rarely competitive swimmers get out of the pool to pee.

I was curious, so here's a source for the Michael Phelps tidbit:

https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/08/06/breaking-news-fro...

Re: Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)

#182

Post by thaumasiotes »

xiii1408 wrote: post #21

This has been well-known by swimmers for a long time: chlorine itself is pretty much fine for you. It's the chemical reaction of chlorine with waste products, including human waste, that produces toxic byproducts and the concomitant "pool smell." If you swim in a well-maintained pool (e.g. one of my university's competition swimming pools), there's no "pool smell."

> chlorine itself is pretty much fine for you

It's difficult to imagine a context that would make this sentence reasonable. Chlorine is a light halogen. It's fine if it's bound to something stable, like in salt. It certainly isn't fine by itself. It's literally one step up from fluorine, the most horrifying substance known to man.

The safety diamond for chlorine rates it a 4 for health: "Very short exposure could cause death or major residual injury".

Re: Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)

#183

Post by mchannon »

This article's full of problems.

The first reason chloramine gets to be a problem is users don't shower before entering the pool. The amount of urine a swimmer can introduce into the water is small compared to the amount of urea coming off their unwashed body. Icelandic people religiously shower before entering their shared baths, and look on non-showering the way we might look at people not bothering to wiping their backside.

And the other two big misconceptions are that time will take care of the problem (chlorine evaporates, amines don't) and that you can just dump in chlorine or other chemicals to get rid of the problem. It uses far less energy and wastes less water to simply dump and replace the pool water (chlorine tablets require ridiculous amounts of water and energy in their manufacture).

Re: Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)

#184

Post by dragonwriter »

michaelmrose wrote: post #142
s4vi0r wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the harm in it? The amount of urine is negligible in relation to the water, and unless you're sick with a UTI or something urine is sterile anyways. I don't get it the other way around - why do people freak out about it? I don't care one way or the other whatever or not people piss in the pool next to me - its like somebody splashing you with water in the middle of a rainstorm.

It reacts with Chlorine to produce an irritant that irritates your eyes and nose.

> It reacts with Chlorine to produce an irritant that irritates your eyes and nose.

So does pretty much everything related to your body, including the stuff usually present on your skin, the outside of your eyes, and the inside of your nose, throat, and lungs.

Which is part of why chlorine itself is noted to be “irritating to the nose, throat, and lungs” and “[a] severe irritant of the eyes”, without any qualifications of “if first combined with urine.” [0]

And why, when chlorine was used as a chemical weapon in warfare, it wasn't as a chlorine-urine binary agent.

[0] https://www.cleartech.ca/ckfinder/userfiles/files/MSDS/Chlor...

Re: Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)

#185

Post by Fnoord »

djsumdog wrote: post #75
braythwayt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To paraphrase a HaHaOnlySerious joke about diving: "There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who have peed in a pool. And those who lie about it."

I've never peed in a pool, or a shower for that matter. I have a hand-washing based obsessive compulsive disorder, which I'm sure is part of it.

> I've never peed in a pool

Yet there's this huge market for incontinence pads, and elder swim, too. Do you think incontinence magically stops when you're in a swimming pool? Don't you think the times you swam you had trace amounts of pee leaving your body?

Re: Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)

#186

Post by jfrankamp »

bluedino wrote: post #81
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This blows my mind. I’ve never considered doing this in a pool at any age and can’t believe anyone else would either. Yet half of the population apparently has, and they think everyone else does it too.

we had a swim-up bar at our resort and plenty of alcoholic drinks were consumed over the course of a day, and not many bathroom breaks were taken

"I" statements. :-) reminds me of "Mistakes were made!"

Re: Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)

#187

Post by dragonwriter »

kisstheblade wrote: post #154
amelius wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How bad is urine really, in the quantities found in a typical pool? Remember that doctors used to taste urine, to test for e.g. diabetes.

Urine is sterile. That's why it's good to pee on wounds. Edit: Wow, what harsh downmodding :) Yes I was wrong and learned something, isn't it still useful to keep my comment here for other's education? I literally heard this "urine is sterile" comment in the last couple of weeks. I stand corrected, thanks!

Urine is not sterile,though it normally doesn't contain harmful bacteria, and it's not generally good to pee on wounds, and even the specific cases it's been popularized as a treatment for (jellyfish stings) it's not a good idea.

Re: Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)

#188

Post by dragonwriter »

cazum wrote: post #166
kisstheblade wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urine is sterile. That's why it's good to pee on wounds. Edit: Wow, what harsh downmodding :) Yes I was wrong and learned something, isn't it still useful to keep my comment here for other's education? I literally heard this "urine is sterile" comment in the last couple of weeks. I stand corrected, thanks!

I think this should go without saying, but this is obviously untrue. Yet, I've heard it more times than I could ever recall. Where did this myth come from?

It came from the time when harmless bacteria weren't recognized as a thing, only infectious germs; urine from a healthy person does not tend to contain harmful bacteria and is this not an infection vector, thus it was held, incorrectly, to be sterile.

Re: Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)

#189

Post by craigds »

michaelmrose wrote: post #129
deepGem wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gosh this is not gonna go well with the public. I know several kids who just can't hold pee in the pool. They'll just let it out. Also its not like the toilets are right there. You often have to get out of the pool, walk like 100 yards or down a flight of stairs. It's a PITA. Even Michael Phelps once said in an interview that very rarely competitive swimmers get out of the pool to pee.

If said kids can't avoid peeing in the pool they shouldn't be in the pool or should be wearing diapers to avoid pissing all over fellow patrons. The restrooms are rarely convenient in big box stores or the mall they are often a fair hike away but you don't see little Johnny hiking up his leg to pee on his fellow shoppers.

No diaper can hold pee in while in a pool. Pool diapers only hold poo, and even then only some of it.

Re: Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)

#190

Post by lukevdp »

dragonwriter wrote: post #161
illumin8 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most pools require toddlers and infants to wear special swim diapers that provide some type of barrier to prevent pee (and worse) from getting in the water. Not that they're foolproof, but if you are swimming in a pool that doesn't require this, I would get out. There are some really nasty diseases that come from human waste that I would not want to come in contact with.

> Most pools require toddlers and infants to wear special swim diapers that provide some type of barrier to prevent pee (and worse) from getting in the water. Swim diapers are to prevent feces from getting in the pool, or at least greatly limit the quantity. They really don't do much of anything for urine, nor are they intended to. (An absorbent diaper in a pool would be useless and fail completely as it would become…

Not sure why this is getting downvoted because it’s 100% correct. I’ve got two toddlers, we use these and it says this on the package.
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