With summer in full swing, many people are cooling off in swimming pools.
However, some of the substances that are made when chlorine in the water reacts with compounds in human sweat, urine or dirt aren't so refreshing.
Now, researchers have compared the effectiveness of different water treatment processes in mitigating these so-called disinfection byproducts (DBPs).
They report their results in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Chlorine is usually added to pool water to kill harmful microbes. However, this disinfectant can react with substances in the pool water -- many of which are introduced by swimmers themselves -- to form DBPs, which can irritate the eyes, skin and lungs. Most pool systems continuously recirculate water through various treatment steps to both disinfect the water and reduce DBPs and their precursors.
But because of the difficulty of comparing swimming pools with different conditions, such as number of swimmers, chlorine dosing or filling-water quality, scientists don't currently know which strategy is the best.
So, Bertram Skibinski, Wolfgang Uhl and colleagues wanted to compare several water treatment strategies under the controlled and reproducible conditions of a pilot-scale swimming pool system.
