serenmarie said:
They are only using Pristine BLue, nothing else. I read some where on here that it's not EPA approved to be used by itself, only with something else. Is there any documentation for that?
You can also look at the
APVMA website in Australia for more info on why copper or silver ions alone are not sufficient for sanitation.
PristineBlue® has an
MSDS that indicates that it consists of 18.25%-21.75% of Copper sulfate pentahydrate with EPA registration number 64962-1. You can search for EPA registrations using the
Pesticide Product Label System (PPLS) where the more recent submissions for labels (19-JUN-2009) have wording such as "PRISTINEBLUE is an innovative, unique formulation used for control of alage and suppression of bacterial growth in private and public pools, spas and hot tubs." The company that makes PristineBlue is Earth Science Laboratories, Inc. and they use the same master EPA registration number for several products including Earthtec as shown in the
PAN Pesticides Database and is listed for multiple uses as a disinfectant and algaecide including use for swimming pools and hot tubs/spas.
However, this product has not passed
EPA DIS/TSS-12 when used by itself since it cannot kill bacteria quickly enough. At the concentrations used in pool water, roughly 0.5 to 1.0 ppm copper based on their label instructions, it takes copper around 20-40 minutes for a 99% kill of most heterotrophic bacteria -- something for which chlorine at normal levels found in pools takes around 1 minute (with CYA in the water; 2-3 seconds with 1 ppm FC and no CYA for 99% kill). So the copper can generally kill many bacteria faster than they can reproduce, but cannot kill them quickly enough to prevent person-to-person transmission. [EDIT] As I now show in
this post, copper ions at pool/spa concentrations don't kill most fecal coliform bacteria so can't even prevent uncontrolled bacterial growth for these bacteria. [END-EDIT] This is why it is not allowed to be used alone in commercial/public pools, but there are no regulations regarding what you must do in a residential pool with regard to sanitation. Also, metal ions such as copper and silver are not effective at killing viruses. For example,
this paper shows that copper ions do a 90% inactivation of Herpes Simplex Virus in 30 minutes at 100-200 ppm, but that is far, far higher in concentration than found in pools (copper is usually < 1.0 ppm in pools).
The PristineBlue website claim of being a bactericide is inconsistent with FIFRA rules that prevent such claims for use in swimming pools or spas unless EPA DIS/TSS-12 is passed so I've written to the EPA about this. The product label regarding "suppression of bacterial growth" is more of a gray area and not as blatant as claiming to be a bactericide, something for which
Zodiac got into trouble with Nature2 a while back. The EPA registration for PristineBlue® is shared by other products from the same manufacturer such as EarthTec, Aquadrop, Radiance, Agritec, CopCheck, Cleanwater Blue and Algae Shield where claiming to be a bactericide is much less restrictive when used for non-swimming water sources where there is not a constant introduction of new bather waste including fecal matter.
At any rate, I suspect that the pool was not only not using any chlorine, but didn't even have a decent amount of copper from PristineBlue in it. With copper in the water, it would not normally be green from algae. It might still get cloudy if one does not use any oxidizer. The PristineBlue system has PristinePower which is a non-chlorine shock (MPS) so if he is only using PristineBlue by itself with no oxidizer then you would end up swimming in an accumulation of sweat and urine.
Richard