Pool Chemistry 101-Did Someone Pee In My Pool?

14 Mar Pool Chemistry 101-Did Someone Pee In My Pool?

How much pee is in our swimming pools? New urine test reveals the truth

From The Guardian

Studies reveal that 3 out of every 4 people have done this, and yet nobody will admit to doing so.  Unfortunately, it seems like a harmless activity at the time.  In reality, the byproducts of the chemical reaction of sanitizers and compounds in urine can potentially cause harm to humans far beyond what was previously understood.  This post from The Guardian reveals a new scientific test that can actually measure the amount of urine in swimming pools.  Understanding this number will go a long way towards removing these dangerous compounds and hopefully creating awareness of how harmful urine can be in a swimming pool.

Here is an excerpt from the post:

Olympic swimmers admit to it and it seems many of the rest us are peeing in the water too, with a new scientific test finding up to 75 litres of urine in public pools

It is an antisocial act that normally goes under the radar, but many swimmers have long suspected the truth: people are peeing in the pool.

Now scientists have been able to confirm the full extent of offending for the first time, after developing a test designed to estimate how much urine has been covertly added to a large volume of water. Regular swimmers with a keen sense of hygiene may wish to stop reading now.

The test works by measuring the concentration of an artificial sweetener, acesulfame potassium (ACE), that is commonly found in processed food and passes through the body unaltered.

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After tracking the levels of the sweetener in two public pools in Canada over a three-week period they calculated that swimmers had released 75 litres of urine – enough to fill a medium-sized dustbin – into a large pool (about 830,000 litres, one-third the size of an Olympic pool) and 30 litres into a second pool, around half the size of the first.

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