Repost: A Case for Not Wanting Blue in our Pools!

YippeeSkippy

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LifeTime Supporter
Jan 17, 2012
21,205
Evans, Georgia
We all want our pools to be sparkly blue…..right? But believe it or not there are times when you don’t want to add “blue” to the water.

Let me first lay an old archaic English word on you- Vitriol. You may know that word to mean “caustic” or “bitter” and use it to describe someone’s personality.

But vitriol, and in particular Blue Vitriol is *not* something we want in our TFP pools! Blue Vitriol is another name for COPPER! And we sure don’t want to be adding that to our pools since we know it causes staining to our lovely pool surfaces, and it can cause our pretty blond swimmers hair to turn green!

So who would knowingly want to add that to their pool? The problem lies in that most folks are unaware that many pool care products do contain this sinister ingredient. Sure it is a good algaecide, but are the side effects worth it? Especially since we at TFP know how to keep our pools pristine and clean without this ingredient.

I go in to shop and see buckets of chlorine pucks that contain copper for sale by big name manufacturers and cringe when I see someone buying them. Looking at pool store ads I see a variety of products that scream out on the label how they do “6 in 1”, “Multipurpose” or “All Purpose” they are. Yet they don’t really spell out how this one product can do so many things?? So along with the chlorine we do like, they’ve stuck some copper in there too.

Rarely does a product spell out that it is copper laden. One national pool store product simply calls itself “Copper Algaecide”....truth in labeling! Many are labeled “BlueMagic”, “Xblue” or some other fancy sounding name. You think they’re talking about the pool water using that blue word. But *I* think they’re specifying a product line different from the copper-free ones they also make.

My entire point here is to please be aware of what is added to your water. Read the ingredients. Occasionally it will be listed and sometimes it just claims “Trade Secret Ingredients”, but if you dig around online, particularly in the SDS sheets, you may find that copper is indeed included.

Buyer Beware.

Maddie :flower:
 
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A little while ago YouTube recommended a video from one of those makeup channels talking about blond hair getting the famous pool-green tint.

She got most of it right, except the root cause.

She said the green tint is because of copper in the water and gave some tips on how to mitigate that. On her video she said the source of the copper was old copper pipes on pools and she refused to accept that people (likely unknowingly) put copper on their pools.
 
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For what it’s worth, I do not think it’s a given that all Clorox products mentioning ‘blue’ in the name, necessarily contain copper. I’m pretty sure the Clorox Pool and Spa Shock pictured does not.
 

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