Quote Originally Posted by ernie1959 View Post
I'm just a homeowner/pool owner, and am not promoting any products. In another current topic regarding ion sanitization (not specifically Ecosmarte), it was stated that if the manufacturer claimed that they actually sanitized the water, they would be subject to a legal claim. Now, I have no idea about that specific product, and maybe such a claim by the manufacturer would be unsubstantiated.

Ecosmarte, on the other hand, through a claimed process of ionization and oxidation, does specifically claim to disinfect and sanitize pool water. They provide links to studies which purport to validate the claim that this process does in fact kill various bacteria and viruses. They also provide their own "science" section detailing various pathogens which are killed at certain copper levels. In addition, after being concerned about some of the previous posts here, a quick Google search led me to various studies showing confirmation of the effectiveness of copper and oxidation as a sanitizer. Also in fairness, none of these were done in pools, nor specifically on the Ecosmarte system.
Links, please!

And if you have copies of material from EcoSmarte, claiming that their product can sanitize pools apart from chlorine, please help me get a copy. But, keep in mind the EcoSmarte 'salt system' is a chlorine generator . . . just like all other salt systems. Eco Smarte just has engaged in some very artful product descriptions that have caused at least some of their customers to think that they were getting a chlorine free system.

But speaking of fairness, I also did a Google search of "pool chlorine health danger study" and was surprised to see that there have been numerous studies showing a direct correlation between chlorine in swimming pools and an increase in various diseases, including cancer.
Check again. ALL of the studies are for INDOOR pools. Not going to get into this in May or June, however, but we've investigated this exhaustively. If you want to pursue it sooner, take it up with Chem_Geek in the China Shop section, once he gets back in the country.

I have that particularly Discovery article archived, and it's a particularly bad one, chock full of non-science: "Some pools use ozone, copper and silver ions, or even moss to kill bacteria!". Again, take it up in the China Shop. (Yes, I know a commercial pool in the midwest installed a spagnum moss system several years ago -- why don't you find them, and ask them how that worked out for them.)


The other thing I saw posted was that ion systems don't save you money on chemicals. That is blatantly false.
They save money, for people who can't do chlorine correctly. They can help prevent the start up disasters many people around the country are having (and discussing here now) due to the warm spring.

But, the $1,500 you spent on your unit is 4 - 6 years worth of chemicals for folks here with pools your size. Not sure how that's saving money!


. I added about half of a $16 bag of sodium bicarbonate to get our calcium hardness to 400.
Sodium bicarbonate has no effect on calcium hardness


At a minimum, there are studies proving that chlorine pools are NOT safe.
No, there are not.

I have over 1,000 peer-reviewed articles on water chemistry archived, and among them is not one such study. I hope to expose the index to those this fall. There are lots and lots of MSM and gutter-press articles that make such claims, but no scientific ones. There are risks associated with EVERY chemical -- including toxic heavy metals like copper and silver -- but the single most dangerous chemical in any pool remains dihydrogen oxide, which kills 1,000's annually in the US alone.


That's why I have tried to simply present facts.
Please present them. The Discovery article you linked was by a journalist with little or no science training showing. Chuck Gerba's studies on copper silver ionizers are mostly available on the Internet. Why don't you read through those? That's, actual science. And you have to get past the abstracts; a lot of his early work was sponsored by ionizer companies, so he wrote artful abstracts to keep from PO'ing them. But, when you did into the actual articles you find that that the Cu/Ag systems w/o chlorine were ineffective, and the Cu/Ag systems WITH chlorine were statistically indistinguishable from systems with chlorine alone.

Cu/Ag systems kill algae . . . and not much else.

If you want to check out ACTUAL chemical free pools (including free of toxic heavy metals like copper and silver), check out the photo thread of them in the photo gallery.