Many homeowners chlorinate their swimming pools , however there are other alternatives that they could use, especially considering factors associated with costs, convenience and safety. Common solutions for swimming pools include chlorine, algaecide and stabilizer. When water is mixed with chlorine, hypochlorous acid is formed and it is an active substance that kills microorganisms. It works by penetrating the cell walls of germs with chlorine ion, disrupting inner processes and enzymes.
Hypochlorous acid repeats the process until all organic material is converted into chloramines. Although commonly used, it is a widely accepted fact that chlorine is a risky chemical and accumulated chloramines can be quite troublesome.
Chlorine could also attack our skin, causing skin irritation and disrupting our supply of polyunsaturated fatty acids and vitamin E. It could also cause itchiness of the eyes and redness. People asthma could experience increased problem and this could affect children who spend much of their time pools with high chlorine presence.
Cancer is the scarier consequence of continuous chlorine exposure. Cancer of the bladder, bowels, breast, esophagus and larynx are often associated with chlorine exposure. There’s also an indication that higher chlorine level in our body could elevate risks of cardiovascular diseases. Unfortunately, because chlorine does a great job of cleaning open water, it is still the most commonly used chemical for this purpose. It doesn’t only attack organic material; hypochlorous acid is also corrosive and could cause damages to pump and other metal objects in the long run.
Other than chlorine, another chemical known as stabilizer is also used in common solution. Cyanuric acid is used for this purpose and it protects chlorine from being neutralized by sunlight. A common stabilizer level in swimming pool is between 30 and 50 ppm. Too few and chlorine molecules are not fully protected against the sunlight and too much, the stabilizer will over-protect chorine molecules, rendering them ineffective.
Algacide is also a common substance found in swimming pool solutions and it works effectively to discourage the growth of algae in our pool. It maintains proper pH level and boosts the filter performance, because water will lower content of algae can be processed more easily. Phosphate is the common food source of algae and it must be removed completely. Also, decomposed algae will release phosphate allowing new breed of algae to flourish once again. In this case, swimming pool water should have very low phosphate level to reduce the growth of algae.
It is clear that swimming pool solutions with chlorine and other chemicals could really harm our health. Baquacil is an alternative that swimming pool owners could use to replace chlorine. After using this product, we won’t notice dryness of the skin and distinctive chemical odor. However, Baquacil is more expensive that typical chlorine solutions and for a large pool, it may require us to spend about $100 each month. Also Baquacil is rather hard on the filtering system and we may need to replace filters twice as often.
