Best Method for Pool and Spa Sanitation for Chlorine Allergy

[PoolDoc]

What are the other forms of chloramines that can cause respiratory issues? Are there any?

One of the scientific articles I recently archived attempted to enumerate chlorinated by-products, and ID'd upwards of 500 compounds. They are very hard to distinguish, and doing so is literally a matter of 'cutting edge' research.

As a class, these compounds tend to be irritating, to eyes, skin, and lungs. But you have to understand: scientists and researchers can barely distinguish these compounds; they are no where close determining the health effects specific to each compound.

Also, because researchers have not been able to tell one compound from another, they have -- even in scholarly articles -- referred to them as "chlorine" or "chloramines". But that is almost as bad as referring to that "dangerous chemical used in many kitchens, sodium chloride". (If you don't know, sodium chloride is table salt . . . and it is dangerous. Over use of it kills more people each year (via high blood pressure, etc.) than the "dangerous chlorine compounds" in drinking water do.

Another area of new research is attempting to move past current crude measures of health risk ("eating peanut butter results in 109 additional new cases of cancer per 1,000,000 people per year") to relative health effects ("cutting table salt use back to less than 1000 mg per day will extend the life of average French citizen living on the European continent by 0.72 years, and will enhance their life during their last decade by 31 points, using the standard WHO Quality of Life index").

But, right now, they are still working on simply being able to test and measure those compounds.

I ask as I know for certain that if my daughter swims in a pool with very low chlorine, she does not get the symptoms. Now, could it be some reaction in the "chemical soup" that is pool water that is reduced when FC is low and its not an actual chlorine allergy?

Uh-h. Color me skeptical.

How do you KNOW that those pools are low chlorine? Did you test them?

But, even if you had, that wouldn't prove anything . . . unless you RAISED the chlorine in those pools, and THEN had your daughter swim in them . . . and found that she began to experience symptoms as soon as the chlorine levels in THOSE pools went up.

Let me go back to my earlier statement: YOU have ALREADY proved, by your OWN statements about your daughter's shower habits that she's not allergic to chlorine. (I'm assuming you got the test results from the water company? THOSE would be accurate.)

Let me take it one step farther. There is NO evidence -- zip, nada, none, nothing -- that chlorine in water (so long as it STAYS in the water) EVER causes respiratory reactions. Skin reactions? Yes. Eye reactions? Yes. But respiratory reactions? No. These reactions occur ONLY when chlorine (or chlorinated compounds) get into the air.

During a shower, chlorinated volatiles are going to be released -- if present -- to a FAR, FAR greater extent, then during swimming in a pool. In a shower, almost every bit of water is exposed to the air, enabling each droplet to release any volatile irritants it contains. By contrast, MOST Of the water in a pool is not near enough to the air surface to release anything.

Let me go back to YOUR test results. You have at least two values that are untrustworthy. Your FC is 3.0, and your CYA is 100. What that most LIKELY means is that your pool water's FC is 3.0 OR ABOVE and that your CYA level is 100 or ABOVE. Above is more likely than 'at': your actual values may well be FC=17 ppm and your CYA = 340 ppm!

More than that your TDS reading is improbable. It is possible to have FC @ 3+, TA @ 110+, Cal @ 200+, & CYA @ 100+ . . . and still have a TDS of 1000. But it's not very likely. Now, the TDS reading is not really very important. But it just throws up the question of, "How reliable are your PaP store's tests?"

PaP store generally seem to do better than other pool stores. But over the years, I've seen hundreds of reports of extremely unreliable pool water testing by pool stores. One of my favorite experiments is to have neighbors go into a pool store together, BOTH carrying water samples that they PRETEND are from their own pools, but that are ACTUALLY from the SAME pool.

To date, nobody has gotten matching testing results, when the pool store tested the same water 2x!

Once you get the K2006, we can tell you how to measure and see that it actually is. You'll have to use the DPD-FAS test (instead of the DPD colorimetric PaP is probably using) to measure FC, and you'll have to do a measured dilution to test your CYA.

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I can help you, if you want to work on this in a systematic, fact-based, way.

You know you have water -- in your shower -- that is chlorinated and does NOT irritate your daughter.

You know that you have water that is chlorinated, AND that has nobody knows what-else in it, that DOES irritate your daughter.

You need to start with what you know works: shower water (ie, tap water) in your pool, and then CAREFULLY add additional chemicals, to see if ANY of them trigger the problem. If you test accurately, work systematically, and discover that chlorine -- free chlorine -- IS triggering your daughter's problem, we'll be extremely interested, but we aren't going to try to bury the results. We do NOT sell chlorine, here.

And, if you've dealt with allergies before, you already know that this step-by-step challenge process is EXACTLY the process followed medically to identify the allergen or irritant that is causing a patient problems.


BUT, if you just "want low chlorine" and the heck with the facts, we don't need to keep spending time talking about it. Just convert your pool to Baquacil (PHMB) which is the ONLY EPA recognized pool sanitizer that is chlorine free.

PHMB (Baquacil) has a host of problems as a pool treatment (we have a whole forum section about them), but it has not been (as far as I known) ever been associated with respiratory problems, at least the first 2 years it's used.

So, if you just want low chlorine, go to a store that will sell you Baquacil, Softswim or some other PHMB system, and convert.

If you drain and refill before you add PHMB, you will almost certainly eliminate whatever is triggering your daughter. BUT, if you convert in place, you run the risk that your daughter's trigger will REMAIN in the pool and cause problems. So, DRAIN FIRST!

(My guess is that your daughter is triggering off of something that forms when chlorine is mixed with whatever else is in your pool. If that is correct, you can convert without draining, and eliminate the problem. But if it's something that causes your daughter problems even when there is no chlorine . . . the problems may continue after you convert.)

Do NOT convert to an highly ozonated or a toxic heavy metal system!

Remember that ozone is a SEVERE respiratory irritant and trigger and that Nature2 is a toxic heavy metal system (both copper and silver are toxic heavy metals). They are not very toxic to humans, but they are quite toxic to other life. There is active research by an Everglades research center into the toxic effects of copper on wildlife and the eco system.)