Like to try Borates but I've got Lab's like to drink the water. Anyone have pets that drink the water like there going to the electric chair with Borates in there pool? Are they that harmful to pets?
Borates and Pets
- Thread starter maxepr1
- Start date
For dogs and cats that get 100% of their drinking water from a pool with 50 ppm of borates the total long term dose of borates will still be below the threshold of detectable symptoms.
Note that for humans typical health regulations require that you be way way below the threshold of detectable symptoms, which is not the case for pets in this situation. Humans are dramatically less sensitive to borates compared to pets, so none of this is an issue at all for people. Still, if you want to keep you pets as safe as you keep your children, it is best to teach them not to drink pool water (and that is for several reasons not just borates).
Note that for humans typical health regulations require that you be way way below the threshold of detectable symptoms, which is not the case for pets in this situation. Humans are dramatically less sensitive to borates compared to pets, so none of this is an issue at all for people. Still, if you want to keep you pets as safe as you keep your children, it is best to teach them not to drink pool water (and that is for several reasons not just borates).
Jason, thanks for the reply. My dogs only drink the water when swimming! They know enough not to drink from the waters edge. But they ave been known to "accidently fall in to get a drink"...lol
Jason, if I was to start on Borates do I dump it all in at one time or just ease into it? Calculator says around 1200ozs. for 35ppm for my pool. And is Borax the best/cheapest way to go? I'm thinking of starting for PH buffering effect. Trying to smooth out the PH spikes.
maxepr1, I don't know if you've already seen it, but there's a thread detailing how to borate-ize your pool here:
so-you-want-to-add-borates-to-your-pool-why-and-how-t4921.html
I followed those instructions and it worked perfectly, and couldn't have been easier.
so-you-want-to-add-borates-to-your-pool-why-and-how-t4921.html
I followed those instructions and it worked perfectly, and couldn't have been easier.
As noted in this post, The No Observed Adverse Effect Level (NOAEL) for dogs was 8.8 mg/kg (that's milligrams of Boron per kilogram of body weight). So with 50 ppm borates in the pool, a 20 kilogram (44 pound) dog would have to drink over 3.5 liters (3.7 quarts) of pool water EVERY DAY and even that is just the level where no symptoms were seen. Actual symptoms (smaller testicles) were seen in male dogs at 29 mg/kg which is 3 times higher (they didn't test levels in between these two). Mammals do process and excrete boron -- they are just limited in the rate at which they can do so.
So our recommendation to not have dogs drink the pool water when borates are used is being conservative and as Jason noted it's better not to drink pool water anyway for other reasons including salt levels, disinfection by-products, etc. It's just being prudent. Not at all like going to the electric chair!
So our recommendation to not have dogs drink the pool water when borates are used is being conservative and as Jason noted it's better not to drink pool water anyway for other reasons including salt levels, disinfection by-products, etc. It's just being prudent. Not at all like going to the electric chair!
As MITS described, you want to follow those directions when adding borates. It's pretty much all at once by following the formula within.
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