I've been looking around and both at home and at college it seems the biggest resevoirs of water if running water were to be lost are swimming pools. My parents have a pool in the back yard and there are a couple on campus. So, how safe is it to drink pool water? In the short term I doubt it would have any effects, but then again, the water here at school burns my eyes readily enough, so it could have an effect if drank in quantity. While at home, my mom's dog doesn't seem to have any problems drinking primarily out of the swimming pool.

Pool water is a good source, as the chlorine should keep out a lot of bacteria. You'd need to boil it before drinking it to get rid of the chlorine.

The typical pool has a chlorine concentration ranging from 1 to 3 PPM (parts per million.

The typical drinking water has a chlorine concentration ranging from 0.2 to 3 PPM.

3 PPM of chlorine is very drinkable. I consider my pool as a ready source of 15,400 gallons of excellent drinking water. Unfortunately in winter the surface is likely to be frozen and the water won't have sufficient chlorine to be safe. If nothing else I could chip off some, melt it, and use household bleach to disinfect it as needed.

If the power was out, without filtering the water's particulates would likely increase over time, but it is still sterile - assuming the chlorine level is kept up (I use a floating device that holds chlorine tablets and doesn't require electricity to function). Pouring the water through a coffee filter would get rid of much of the paticulates.

When the chlorine in pools contacts organic matter, it forms something called chloramine - this is most likely the thing you smell - not the free chlorine that does the disinfecting. Chloramine smells a lot and burns eyes, and doesn't disinfect as well as free chlorine. Every once in a while the pool owner needs to "shock" the pool by temporarily bringing the chlorine concentration up to around 10-12 PPM. This removes the chloramines (converts chloramine to free chlorine, nitrogen gas, and water). After a short time the sun will "burn" off the extra chlorine and the chlorine level will return to a more normal 1-3 PPM.

There is your pool chemistry lesson for the day. Next week we will discuss how cyanuric acid - also called "stabilizer" or conditioner -acts as a sunscreen to prevent the sun's UV radiation from driving off chlorine from the pool

Ken K.

How does boiling the water remove the chlorine? I've always assumed the chlorine is in the water as Cl^-1 ions similar to when salt NaCl is dissolved in water. Boiling salt water just makes the water saltier.

ive accidentaly drank enough pool water that it doesnt affect me, so i could drink it if i had to.unless it was dirty or had pee in it.my dog also likes to drinks gallons of pool agua in the summer.

it only bothers me when it gets up your nose andburns! haha

If I recall correctly, My mom's pool in Florida had something other than clorine in it to kill germs. I don't remember what it was, but the effect of drinking it may be different than drinking clorinated water.

I'm going to take a guess and say if it is used for pool water, it's not toxic. :P

Bactacil, something similiar sounding to that, is a non-chlorine alternative to chlorine that I've heard of. Does your mom do her own, or does she have a pool guy come over and take care of it? If the latter, ask them. If she does it herself, the cannister/box should have the manufacturer's telephone number on it- I'm sure they've been asked this question more than a few times.

But salt is a dissolved solid, not a dissolved gas. Boiled water has the oxygen forced out of it by the heat, the same thing happens with the free chlorine.

Or, you can add ascobic acid (vitamin C), and give it a few minutes. There should be some nasty looking white flakes floating in your water- filter it, that preciptate (sp, it's early) is vitamin C bonding to the chlorine. Does the same thing with iodine. That's part of why I carry Emergen-C in my kits.

Not sure how it's done, I'm not a chemist and I didn't stay in a Holiday Inn Express. When you asked the question, I did some Googling and that was the recommendation.

Ken,

COOL! Thanks for the education. I am looking forward to next weeks lesson.

Cameron

Freddie the Pool Guy. That was a while back.

Read my post on the "Survival Straw" . This is mainly what I use it for !<img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
It works. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Better check a bit more on this use of pool water.
If iy was onlt clorine then a filter will remove it but it's not! Pool water contains salts as well and your normal filter will not remove salts.

In water with good pH levels, the chlorine added generates hypochlorous (HOCl) and a Hypochlorite ion (OCl). The Hypochlorous acid is the part that does the disinfecting. Hypochlorous acid is fairly unstable. High heat drives the chlorine from hypochlorous acide in the form its elemental gas (very small quantities). The same thing happens when the hypochlorous acid is exposed to UV rays from the sun.

That is why pool owners are careful not to let the water get too hot (one problem with hot tubs) and they make sure to add cyanuric acid, which binds with the chlorine to form chlorimide, which is much more stable (not as easily driven off by heat & sun) and at the right PPM levels is still a very effective disinfectant.

The suseptability of chlorine to high temperatures is also why it is recommended that when washing dishes you use lukewarm water for the chlorine rinse rather than hot water. You don't want to use cold water either, since that reduces the chlorine's disinfectant properties.

I'm not aware of any toxicity to drinking the chemicals in a properly maintained, chlorinated pool for a relatively short period of time (i.e. not months or years). I have no idea about the safety of pools that use other disinfectants besides chlorine. You often run across admonishments to not drink pool water, but I suspect that the warning is aimed at curbing gastrointestinal illness and not because pool water is poisonous. In everyday life, yes, don't drink pool water. You can get sick. Why risk getting sick when you can just walk over to the water fountain for a drink of water?

But in an emergency, I think it is OK, although it may irritate your gut. However, you should assume that the water needs treatment since normal chlorination may keep the water clear and algae-free, but it won't necessarily kill all the bugs that may make you sick. I would definitely treat water from a public pool or any pool that gets a lot of use. An emergency is not a time to play Russian roulette with your health by drinking untreated pool water.

If a pool is going to be used as a water source, then it should really be tightly controlled to prevent additional contamination after some disaster. No more swimming, cover it to keep organic debris out, don't let pets drink directly from the pool, don't bathe or wash dishes near the pool so that waste water drains into the pool, don't dip potentially contaminated buckets into the water, etc. Any contamination would, of course, be diluted by the large volume of water, but then again, the pool likely won't be filtered and maintained after a disaster starts, so its best to minimize further contamination.

The non-chlorine pool disinfectant that i have used is called baquacil, active ingredient polyhexamethylene biguanide. It is used in various concentrations as a pre-surgical scrub, mouthwash and eye drops for ugly infections. Drinking poolwater with baquacil in it may well be better for one than drinking tap water. On the other hand, swimming pools collect everything that falls out of the sky. Remember the words of WC Fields when offerred a glass of water.

THAT is what I was trying to think of, thanks.

And the note about fallout is a good one- fallout is anything, it doesn't have to radioactive. And while not all of it has the immediate knee jerk fear that radioactivity does, not all of it is as nice a bird poo.