Common causes of eye stinging

[Rangeball]

I know combined chlorine is a culprit, but what are some other reasons?

PH at what levels?
Alk?
High CYA?

My PH was 8 a few days ago, and since lowering it to 7.6 I've noticed some eye stinging. I'm not sure if this is the cause, or since I only have an OTO kit for chlorine perhaps I'm starting to get a bit of CC. One day I'll have Ben's kit and won't have to worry about this any longer.

Thank you :)

[Watermom]

Usually ph between 7.4-7.6 is the most comfortable range for eyes.

[EricF]

Actually, according to Ben's TEKTATs pool tips info, a ph of 7.8-8.0 is the least irritating. Here are other reasons that are coipied and pasted from a post from Ben.

http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=762&highlight=irritation+salt

From pooldoc:

My experience is that eye irritation is caused by the following, from most irritating to least:
1. chloramines
2. fresh (ie, non-salty) water
3. excessively low or high pH, especially low pH
4. linear quats
5. chlorine below 10 ppm in a stabilized pool
You need to start with a plain chlorinated pool. It's much easier to go from a plain chlorinated pool, to any other type, than it is to come BACK to chlorine.

Get that pool chemistry right, and then see if the eye irritation is at an acceptable level, or not.

If not, add enough salt to raise the salinity to about 3,000 ppm (about what folks on SWG's are running) and see if that helps. If it does, you can consider whether you'd be willing to go to 9,000 ppm, which is about what's in eye saline or tears.

If neither of those work, you only other real option is Baquacil. But of course, you'll be using linear quats, which will be somewhat irritating after you add a dose.

For what it's worth, my experience has been that about 90% of those with irritation problems find that they are reduced to acceptable levels, if they will learn to operate the pool properly with chlorine.

Ben
"PoolDoc"

[sevver]

My mom has been having issues with this as well, the chlorine and ph are in balance. No one else is though, so I am inclined to think it is an alergy, last year she swore it was my Canna plants, so this year I did not plant them and it still is happening, very troublesome...

[halds]

I would be inclined to think that proper bicarbonate level is important as well. Bicarb is an important buffer in body fluids.

Hal

[mwsmith2]

Yep, that's what i've found too. Getting around the 8.0 range feels funky. Not stinging, but definitely not comfortable. It's just too alkaline for me. I haven't experienced the stinging, but then my pH generally is high (whoops!) due to the SWC. Also, with 3200 ppm of salt in there that helps too. I'd recommend that for eye irritation.

Michael

[PoolDoc]

My mom has been having issues with this as well, the chlorine and ph are in balance. No one else is though, so I am inclined to think it is an alergy, last year she swore it was my Canna plants, so this year I did not plant them and it still is happening, very troublesome...
You might want to establish a baseline for comparison. You can do this, by getting two droppers, and filling one with tap water, and one with eye saline purchased from the contact care section of your grocery or whatever. Drop them into her eyes, and let her (yourself / him / whatever) note what's typical of your 'fresh' water, and also of eye saline.

The eye saline is the *least possible* irritating water. If that's too irritating for him / her / them / you . . . there's nothing you can do. There's no way to make pool water less irritating than that!

The fresh water is the 'norm' for your pool -- unless you are very careful, and probably, unless you add salt, you aren't going to be less irritating than that. People often blame 'chlorine' for eye irritation, when their tap water is even more irritating than their pool water, even though the pool water will usually have more chlorine.

It's also worth noting that virtually all real swimmers wear goggles when swimming, regardless of what water they are swimming in. Personally, I find ocean water less irritating than most pool water, but my wife won't open her eyes in either one. Both of my boys (11 & 19) who swim thousands of yards weekly, always carry their goggles, regardless of what they are going to be swimming in.

Ben
"PoolDoc"

[salinda]

Another major source of eye irritation in my family is sunscreen. People put it on and don't wait for it to soak into the skin or dry and then they go in the water and it "melts" into their eyes. This irritation seems to happen when other swimmers go in the water too fast after applying sunscreen too. There gets to be a thin layer of sunscreen on top of the water that causes problems for lots of people. Not scientific, but it seems to make a difference.

Also, our salt pool and our club's salt pool are much less irritating to my children's eyes. I can swim a few laps in our salt pool without goggles.