A new study looks at the unpleasant subject of urine in pools and in hot tubs.

A new study looks at the unpleasant subject of urine in pools and in hot tubs.
Photo Credit: Emilop Avalos/Radio Canada

Pee in the pool- how sweet it isn’t

It’s something we may suspect but usually don’t want to think about too much. However, now there’s a scientific look at pee in public swimming pools, and in hot tubs, and it’s not pretty.

A team of researchers from the University of Alberta took some 250 samples from 31 area public and school pools and hot tubs in two undisclosed cities. They found significant volumes of urine in all pools and tubs tested.  They then followed the urine levels in two pools over a period of three weeks. They don’t actually measure urine, but how sweet it is

The researchers couldn’t actually measure urine as that breaks down in chlorine, but they can measure acesulfame-K (ACE). This is an artificial sweetener found in a wide variety of processed foods like soft drinks, cookies, baked goods, and a wide variety of other products even in other sweeteners.  It passes right through the body and is secreted by urine and is considered an excellent marker for the presence of urine.

225 litres of pee in an Olympic pool?

What they found was that in a pool of 830,000 litres (about a third the size of an Olympic pool, there was on average  of some 75 litres of urine, and in the smaller pool, an average of 30 litres.

The report notes that although obviously not acceptable, at least 19 percent of adults admit to having peed in a pool at least once.

You may want to strap on some goggles before hopping into a public pool — especially if it smells more like ’chlorine’ than normal.
You may want to strap on some goggles before hopping into a public pool — especially if it smells more like ’chlorine’ than normal..that’s the result of a reaction with pee © (Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images

The report notes that while urine is sterile, it contains many nitrogenous compounds such as urea, ammonia, amino acids, and creatinine.

These can combine with the chlorine to form “disinfection byproduct” or DBP’s. These can cause eye irritation and respiratory problems, even leading to asthmatic conditions with long exposure.

You know that red eye you get from swimming in pools? It’s not from the chlorine.

And as for the story you tell kids about the chemical in pools that turns a colour to show who’s peed in the pool? Sadly that’s a myth to try to get kids to not pee in the pool. There is no such chemical.

So now that I’ve revealed that, it doesn’t mean you should do it, alright?

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