Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015) • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by crusso » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

I'm not sold. We had a pool when I was growing up and since I was the youngest child, there was a several year stretch in high school where I was taking care of the chemicals in the pool and really the only person ever swimming in it.

If the pool was looking a little green, I dumped some chlorine in and guess what, the increased chlorine created increased irritation to my eyes. And no, I wasn't the kind to pee in my own pool - not that the amount of pee I could generate would cause the requisite chlorine-pee interaction that makes the pool such an irritant.

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

#342

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

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!

You're not being downvoted as a punishment, it's to help signal that the comment is wrong.

And you're only at a medium gray color.

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

#343

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #185

djsumdog wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Let's not pretend this is a purely binary issue. If one in ten people leak a little bit that's 50x less pee than everyone going on purpose.

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

#344

Post by sandos » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 3:39 PM UTC

sbov wrote: post #251

dotancohen wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly what the swim diapers are for! Are you suggesting that perhaps some people think it is all right to leave their kid in the pool with a swim diaper full of excrement?

Sure, but it's not always obvious when a kid wearing a swim diaper poops. And they don't always tell you. Especially if they know it means they have to get out of the pool to change the diaper.

Swim diapers basically keep the _turds_ stationary. Water will still chew away at it and disperse poop everywhere, so its basically run out of the water when an "accident" happens. Still better than solid poop floating around I guess, but also, potentially, really nasty.

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

#345

Post by michaelmrose » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 3:25 AM UTC

supermw wrote: post #240

michaelmrose wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are picturing themselves drinking your shit most likely. Historically human beings contaminating the same water they draw from has been a substantial cause of illness even if campers now are much more apt to get water from a bottle.

Wouldn't it be very diluted, to the point it is no more harmful than whatever else may be in that river water?

Historically this doesn't seem to be true but obviously it was a much larger group of people polluting the water.

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

#346

Post by michaelmrose » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 3:26 AM UTC

pfranz wrote: post #233

dragonwriter wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pool diapers only hold poo, and even then only some of it. Quite a lot, actually, but not all. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15216564/ “Swim diapers of all three brands exhibited an approximately equal fine-solids retention capability of about 98 to 99 percent over 30 minutes of water immersion activity. Conventional disposable diapers invariably fell down or came apart during the experiments, resulting in…

I wonder how well they work in the real world? I had trouble finding a properly fitting swim diaper for my son. They seemed to require a fairly tight fit around the abdomen and legs (which vary greatly across children and as the grow). Because it's only a handful of times during the summer and most places only carried 1 or 2 styles, I can see the few people who got them might not have the right size or wear it proper…

If your kid for any reason including swim diapers sucking can't keep from shitting up the pool your kid just has to wait until this isn't true to swim doesn't seem like a hard choice.

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

#347

Post by gok » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 4:34 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #210

nck4222 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, what about all the other body fluids/debris that are in pools? Saliva, sweat, earwax, belly button lint, bird shit, insects, band-aids, small animal carcasses that get trapped in the filters but are removed before the pool opens? There's no avoiding other peoples/animals grossness, frankly whether your in a pool or just out and about. Urine may be gross, but it's sterile, and at least for me, there are grosse…

What was it W.C. Fields used to say about drinking water?

Fish chlorinate it?

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

#348

Post by Groxx » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:09 AM UTC

eesmith wrote: post #311

Groxx wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what makes tap water smell like a pool? It evaporates out pretty quickly (a day or so in a normal pitcher), whatever the cause, and I've always assumed it was chlorine since it smells like a tiny waft of bleach.

Quoting myself in the comment you replied to, "the trichloramine product of chlorine interacting with urea".

That's probably less of an issue for water straight from the tap than a pool / a bucket of water that was peed into. Unless there's more urea in tap water than I expect.

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

#349

Post by reilly3000 » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:10 AM UTC

Our species has weathered all kinds of terrible waterborne communicable diseases since time began. It’s fair to say we wouldn’t cover the earth as we do without our sophisticated biome being adapted to all manner of disease from shared bathing.

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

#350

Post by pfranz » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:11 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #346

pfranz wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how well they work in the real world? I had trouble finding a properly fitting swim diaper for my son. They seemed to require a fairly tight fit around the abdomen and legs (which vary greatly across children and as the grow). Because it's only a handful of times during the summer and most places only carried 1 or 2 styles, I can see the few people who got them might not have the right size or wear it proper…

If your kid for any reason including swim diapers sucking can't keep from shitting up the pool your kid just has to wait until this isn't true to swim doesn't seem like a hard choice.

Thanks for sharing your opinion, but I don't really see how that contributes to this conversation. This comments section has a whole lot of pretty hostile replies calling out parents. I don't really see how that addresses anything.

In my case, my child's doctor recommended taking him to a pool as therapy for his motor skills because of developmental problems. He was still over a year away from being potty trained. I researched and ordered 2 or 3 different swim diapers and tried to find the one that fit the best.

During this time I noticed that most brick-and-mortar stores only carry 1 or 2 kinds and I'm sure parents going to the pool on summer vacation won't have the patience I did. Which is why I was curious about this study. It reminded me that condom use is 98% effective, but under typical use is 88-90%. I can easily see the same thing happening with swim diaper effectiveness.

If you're actually concerned about public health and not just the ick factor, I would think young children would be completely banned in most pools or policies for dealing with feces would be more clear when it comes to licensing and regulation. This wasn't my experience working around pools years ago.