Drinking Pool Water

[Gladys]

Another forum I belong to are discussing tthe saftey of drinking pool water in an emergency with all the chemicals in them. Since I use the BBB system, with a cya of 40, I was curious. Does anyone know how safe it would be to drink in an emergency situation? After boiling of course! My chemistry is out of date, but I would think fairly safe, except for the CYA, have no clue what it even is. Thanks for any thoughts you may have on this. Gladys

[hulla]

I bet its safe to drink. Probably about as safe as drinking saccharin which was in our punch as kids. I remmeber always seeing the warning that it causes cancer in lab animals.

But I don't predict an emergency type situation where I would want to drink pool water.

For this to happen, the city drinking water supply would have to get contaminated with poison, all the drinks in the supermarket are sold out, all the airports are shut down, and all the roads out of the city are destroyed. OK, if this happens I'll drink the pool.

[Gladys]

I live on the Gulf coast. You just never know! Last summer I was making daily trips to Orange to make sure my parents and other family members had things like water, ice ,and other things. Better to have a back up plan. Wouldn't want to drink it , but would like to know in advance if it is safe if I had too. Gladys

[Tredge]

There was a long discussion on this forum about the safety of dogs drinking exclusively from the pool and it was deemed safe for them.

Humans dont have the tolerance of a dog but some of the same arguments hold.

If you boil almost any water source for long enough, it is going to be safe to drink.....might not taste good, but should be safe.

I would drink my water straight out of the pool. Clear pool water is "dead" water and shouldnt contain any higher levels of bacteria than my well water.

After all, for a pool to be deemed "safe" for public swimming, it has to contain a max level of harmfull bacteria....and I believe that means for consumption, but the experts will have to verify :)

Not sure I would trust just just any pool....but I'd drink from just about any BBB pool! After all, I get a laugh when I hear folks fanatic about their water describing the taste.....as if they are tasting a fine wine!

[ChuckD]

I sure hope pool water's safe to drink after watching my 3-1/2 year old take her first few laps with her new water wings! She's learning the hard way you can't laugh and swim at the same time.

All my chems are normal with a slightly elevated Cl. Never used anything but BBB and some algaecide two months ago.

C.