Re: Alternative sanitizers and "chemical free" pools--The Tr
In the original
Could Chlorine in your Pool be Affecting your Skin article you referred to it states:
The typical Chlorine level a pool or spa owner maintains is 1000% the level the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) deems safe.
If Chlorine can shorten the life of your pool or spa components (regardless of composition) just think of what it’s doing to your body.
Chlorine contains carcinogens (cancer causing agents) such as bromoforms carbon tectachloride and bischlorothane. Chlorine can combine with organic matter forming trihalomethanes. External exposure to Chlorine can cause your skin to prematurely age and has been known to cause acne, eczema, melanoma,and psoriasis. Breathing the chemical can damage lung tissue. Chemical contact to the eye can cause blindness.
Why can't people just tell the truth and instead have to lie so blatantly (to be clear, I'm referring to the article, not the poster). As shown in the EPA list of
Drinking Water Contaminants, the EPA drinking water limit for chlorine is 4 ppm. 1000% is 10 times so they are claiming that the typical chlorine level in a pool or spa is 40 ppm. Also, the drinking water limit presumes 2 quarts of water consumed every day for a lifetime.
As for shortening the life or pool or spa components and causing skin to prematurely age, how is it that an even more powerful oxidizer hydrogen peroxide is going to avoid this? Now one does have to be careful when characterizing an oxidizer as stronger. It isn't just about thermodynamics, but specific reaction rates. While having hydrogen peroxide break down in UV forms hydroxyl radicals, which by the way is what happens with chlorine as well, hydrogen peroxide doesn't seem to oxidize urea very well and instead has been used to form
hydrogen peroxide urea adduct. Also,
ammonia and hydrogen peroxide mixtures are used for cleaning so hydrogen peroxide does not quickly oxidize ammonia either. So perhaps someone can tell me what bather contaminants hydrogen peroxide in fact does oxidize (without help from UV to form hydroxyl radicals)? The scientific article
Mode of action of hydrogen peroxide... indicates that hydrogen peroxide is effective at oxidizing amino acids and related compounds (e.g. proteins, DNA). Chlorine also reacts quickly with many amino acids. As for skin, hydrogen peroxide produces oxidative stress very similar to chlorine.
The only real truth in that article is that chlorine forms disinfection by-products though does not itself "contain carcinogens" (it is some of the disinfection by-products that are carcinogenic) while hydrogen peroxide does not form such by-products.
