Pee in the Pool

317 cups of urine! Ew or who cares?

By : Cecelia Wheeler

"This 'new' study may just have been published a few days ago but really what they're telling us isn't anything that swimmers didn't know before" I stated as the reporter continued to ask me questions about the new study that was published.

"Okay, so my next question is does having known that there is pee in the pool phase you?" asked the disgusted reporter.

"No, not really we always knew it was there and it would be any different where ever we swam. Whether we swim in a pool, ocean, lake, or pond there will always be something in the water including pee."

"Well I never thought of it that way but could you elaborate some more on this topic?"

"Of course, In a lake, pond or in the ocean not only do you have human pee, you have animal waste, you also have animals, protists, and bacteria. Yet we still swim in those places. There is nothing in the water to try and sort of clean it."

"What do you have to say about their solution to not pee in the pool and that people should rinse off before they get into the pool?"

"Well there is a simple answer for that, " I said while laughing "There is always going to peeing in the pool get over it. As for people rinsing off before you get, there are posters hanging all over around the pool. The pool faculty may try to enforce it but we all know that people don't read signs or listen to others. They do what they want and don't really care if they break the rules. Also, you see those Olympic swimmers, those $400 to $600 take thirty minutes or more to get on if they have to go pee do you really think they are going take it off? If you do then you need to put on get wet then take it off to pee and try to get back into it. You will never make that mistake again. They go in the shower or the warm-up pool. That is just how it is people just have to accept that no matter where they swim there will always be pee in the water."

Below is the article which talks about the study that was done about pee in the pool:

Just How Much Pee Is In That Pool?

March 1, 20179:40 AM ET

BY :ERIKA ENGELHAUPT

You know that sharp odor of chlorine from the swimming pool you can recall from earliest childhood? It turns out it's not just chlorine, but a potent brew of that form when chlorine meets sweat, body oils, and urine. But up until now, just how much urine has been difficult to measure, says chemist of the University of Alberta. Li and her colleagues report they can now tell roughly how much pee is in a pool by measuring the artificial sweeteners carried in most people's urine. Certain sweeteners can be a good proxy for pee, she says, because they're designed to "go right through you" and don't break down readily in pool water. The scientists calculated that one 220,000-gallon, commercial-size swimming pool contained almost 20 gallons of urine. In a residential pool (20-by-40-foot, five-feet deep), that would translate to about two gallons of pee. It's only about one-hundredth of a percent, but any urine in a swimming pool can be a health concern for some people, not to mention that smell that never quite goes away. Li's team collected water from pools and hot tubs at hotels and recreation facilities in two Canadian cities and measured the amount of a sweetener called , or Ace-K, for short. It's found in everything from yogurt to soup these days, so it's no surprise that it's ubiquitous in our urine. It's not just in the North American diet. Ace-K has been found in people's too. And enough people are peeing in pools for sweeteners to show up there, too. "I think you can assume that if people are using your pool, they're peeing in it," says , an environmental engineer at Purdue University. Apart from being gross, that's also a potential health hazard. Chlorine reacts with urine to form a host of potentially toxic compounds called disinfection byproducts. These can include anything from the chloramines that give well-used pools the aforementioned odor, to cyanogen chloride, which is classified as a . There are also nitrosamines, which can cause cancer. There's not enough evidence to say whether the nitrosamine levels in pools increase cancer risk, Blatchley says, but one study in Spain did find in some long-term swimmers. That's not to say that people should avoid swimming, says , an environmental health expert at Rutgers University. Even people with respiratory problems like asthma can benefit from the exercise, but "if you take your child to the pool and they react to it, make sure you understand why," he says. Indoor pools can be more problematic for people with respiratory conditions, for example, because compounds build up in the air above the water, and there's less natural sunlight, which breaks down some harmful compounds. The simplest solution: Just don't pee in the pool. And tell all your friends not to do it, either. "I view it like secondhand smoke," Blatchley says. "It's disrespectful and potentially dangerous." Also, swimmers should shower before getting in the pool, and get out to go to the bathroom, Li says. Even a before diving in can remove much of the sweat and body gunk that reacts with chlorine. Once someone does pee in the pool, the only way to truly get rid of it is to replace the water. "It's not uncommon for water in a pool to go unchanged for years," Blatchley says, since many pool owners or operators just add water as needed rather than completely replacing it, which is more expensive. And the longer water sits in a pool, the worse it gets, his has shown. Over time, people add more chlorine to the water, which is converted to a form called chloride that builds up and encourages the formation of yet more disinfection byproducts. Li says she's a regular swimmer, and doesn't want to discourage people from a healthy activity. "This isn't to scare people," she says, "but hopefully they can prevent the problem."

The was published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

Erika Engelhaupt is a freelance science writer and editor based in Knoxville, Tenn. She is the former online science editor at National Geographic and writes for NPR, Science News, and many other publications. Find her on Twitter .