I think there's also some sodium hydroxide in there as well, which accounts for the pH rise you get when using bleach. Clorox adds sodium polyacrylate to their bleach now. The jury is out on whether this is good or bad. It does do good things for water as far as removing minerals, but whether that works in the real pool world or not isn't known. I'm sure we have some guinea pigs here using it that will let us know one of these days.