Posts Tagged ‘PoolNaturally’
Swimming Performance and Disinfection Byproducts: Biocides, Biofilm and PoolNaturally® Plus
By David Knighton MD
Co-Founder and CEO of Creative Water Solutions and PoolNaturally® Plus
Introduction
Walk into a building with a pool and you can instantly tell it’s there by the smell. No matter how big the building, small the pool, or robust the heating and ventilation system, that characteristic “chlorine” smell is there. If you are like me, a few minutes of exposure to the smell will bring tightness to my chest, itching to my eyes, and after about 20 minutes a light headed feeling. Go outside and it all goes away in about an hour. Swim and it can take days to return to normal. Competitively swim or swim daily and you probably get so used to the air you become acclimated to the irritation of disinfection byproducts (DBP). In the past few years, a lot of research has defined what causes this smell, what effect it has on swimmers, and what can change the creation of DBP’s so the pool becomes a “you don’t know there is a pool until you see it” experience.
How are DBP’s formed?
DBP’s are formed when chlorine, bromine or any halide molecule used to kill bacteria in the water, combines with biologic molecules that contain carbon and nitrogen. The most prevalent molecule in the swimming environment is urea from urine and sweat. Urea undergoes chemical changes in the pool and combines with chlorine or bromine to form over 30 different DBP’s. Some of these molecules stay in the water and others are volatile so they diffuse into the air above the water and eventually into the entire building. The act of swimming actually increases the concentration of DBP’s by churning up the water and increasing the concentration of these molecules in the air.
What Effects do DBP’s have on people?
We know a lot about the effect of one DBP – chloroform – since it was the most commonly used anesthetic for decades. The fancy name for this class of DBP is trihalo-methane (THM). There are many different THM’s with different effects on people, just like there are many different types of DBP’s that have different effects on people. We will look at chloroform and trichloronitrate.
Chloroform inhaled at a concentration of 10,000 ppm puts you to sleep. Prolonged exposure at this very high level will kill your liver, depress your heart function and kill you. In human volunteers, exposure to 4,100 ppm causes serious disorientation and 1,000 ppm causes dizziness, nausea, fatigue and headaches. Prolonged exposure to as little as 10 to 200 ppm can cause liver enlargement and effects on the central nervous system. For a reference, we have measured THM concentrations in commercial indoor pools in the 2 – 3 ppm range.
Application of chloroform to the skin causes redness of the eyes and itching of the skin. One study of people exposed to low levels of chloroform in their drinking water showed a correlation between chloroform concentration and rectal and bladder cancer. In fact, an international health agency classifies chloroform as a carcinogen for humans.
Other studies, especially from Europe, document the effect of trichloronitrate on swimmers. They conclude that this DBP is related to reactive airway disease or asthma in people who swim frequently. Another study shows that DBP’s are associated with changes in DNA in urinary bladder cells that correlate with an increased risk of cancer.
To summarize, DBP’s not only smell bad, they irritate your skin, eyes and lungs; cause central nervous system changes such as dizziness and headaches; cause fatigue; and with prolonged exposure are potential carcinogens.
How do DBP’s affect swimming performance?
Any athletic performance is determined by muscle contraction. Muscle contraction is an energy consuming activity that is related to oxygenation of the blood and blood flow to and from the contracting muscle. Oxygen is used along with blood delivered nutrients to produce energy so the muscle cells can contract and propel the swimmer through the water. Oxygen is delivered to the blood through the lungs as we breathe. Oxygen is then carried by our red blood cells to all tissues in our body including muscles, by blood flow. Blood flow depends on our heart to pump the blood and arteries to carry that blood to our exercising muscles.
At rest, our muscles require very little blood flow and oxygen. As we start to exercise and use our muscles to propel us through the water, they consume all the oxygen and nutrients in the area, then tell their arteries to dilate and send more blood. That causes our hearts to beat faster to supply more blood for the dilated arteries and that eventually causes us to breathe faster to deliver more oxygen to our lungs. A big part of athletic training, is to maximize this energy transport system from air to muscles. The more we exercise, the better the system works. The better the system works, the more we can exercise.
DBP’s affect performance in a number of ways. First, the air just above the water is what a swimmer inhales during swimming. That air has the highest concentration of DBP’s. The amount of oxygen in air follows the rules of physics. The higher the concentration of DBP’s, the fewer oxygen atoms in the same amount of air. So the swimmer in a pool with high DBP’s needs to move more air in and out of their lungs to remove the same amount of oxygen as a swimmer in a pool with lower DBP’s.
DBP’s like trichloronitrate cause lung irritation and narrowing of the tubes that bring air into our lungs. Because of the narrowing, less oxygen gets to the microscopic areas of our lungs where the delivery of oxygen to the blood occurs. Therefore, we need to move more air to extract enough oxygen for our exercising muscles. One result of this lung irritation is the use of drugs, called bronchodilators, that open up the airways and others, that control the inflammation caused by the irritating DBP’s. This asthma is a significant problem in many competitive swimmers.
Like most diseases, some people are more sensitive to DBP’s than others.
Those swimmers who are sensitive to DBP’s have to work harder to provide adequate energy for their contracting muscles than those who are less sensitive to DBP’s irritation.
Performance and conditioning is all about maximizing oxygen extraction from the air, blood flow to the muscles, and removal of waste products from the exercising muscle. DBP’s play a significant role in oxygen concentration in the air; delivery of air to the blood, and pumping of blood to the muscles. Along with the other health effects of chronic exposure to DBP’s and the uncomfortable irritation they cause, swimmers should do everything possible to minimize the concentration of DBP’s in their pools.
What can swimmers do?
Since urea is one source of nitrogen containing bio-molecules that form DBP’s, swimmers can reduce their formation by not urinating in the pool. Sweat is another source of urea that cannot be easily controlled since training causes increased sweating. I’ve talked to many competitive swimmers who tell me they don’t want to stop their training to go to the bathroom to urinate or that their coaches won’t let them take a break. Changing this would help create a more healthful environment for every swimmer, coach, lifeguard, and spectator.
What can facilities can do?
Ventilation
To understand the role of ventilation in this problem, we need to remember that DBP’s are at their highest concentration on the surface of the water. This is the boundary layer where there is little air movement. Traditional ventilation brings outside air inside, warms it up or cools it off depending on the temperature, and then moves it through the building, eventually pushing the air back outside. This is a very expensive process. Moving more air from the outside and through the entire space of the natatorium doesn’t address the area of the pool where DBP’s are in their highest concentration. Increasing the air movement at the surface of the pool does result in a decrease in the concentration of DBP’s. Paddock Evacuator Company’s Chloramine Evacuation System achieves this by a system that moves the air across the boundary layer and moves it outside.
Water treatment
Water disinfection and formation of DBP’s is a classic “rock and a hard place” situation. Chlorine and bromine are very effective and efficient killers of swimming (planktonic) bacteria and algae. They accomplish this through their chemistry. They are very reactive with other atoms and molecules. This reactivity oxidizes proteins and sugars in the cell wall of bacteria and algae, but also reacts with carbon and nitrogen containing compounds to form DBP’s in the water and air. It is the main way we control bacterial growth in most water systems. Even treatment systems, such as salt pools, control bacterial growth with chlorine. You don’t have to add the chemical, a reactor in the pool creates bio-reactive chlorine from the chloride ion in common salt.
When we started treating commercial pool water with PoolNaturally® Plus we found that the air quality in the pool area improved in a couple of days and the air in the entire facility was significantly improved after a week of treatment. Over time our customers starting saying that the only way you know there is a pool in the building is to see the water. Swimmers, coaches, lifeguards, and pool patrons all reported less eye, skin, hair, and lung irritation. After a swim meet in one of our pools, many swimming teams demanded that their facility add PoolNaturally® Plus.
To measure the effect of PoolNaturally® Plus on DBP concentration, we did a study with a fitness club to measure the THM in the air above the pool surface and the water in their two indoor pools (75,000 and 86,000 gallons). We measured levels weekly, for two weeks before PoolNaturally® Plus was introduced and then about every other week for 33 weeks. They have a high bather load and use chlorine for disinfection. We measured a steep decline of THM in the water resulting in 75% reduction in 33 weeks. In the air above the pool the chloroform concentration was decreased by 55%. The air quality improved just like in our other indoor facilities.
How does PoolNaturally® Plus affect DBP production?
The quick answer is we don’t know. We do have a hypothesis. PoolNaturally® Plus is made from Sphagnum moss leaves. In our laboratory, over the past 8 years, we have shown that PoolNaturally® Plus inhibits biofilm formation. Biofilm is a slime like substance that protects bacteria that adhere to the pool or filter surface. In fact, most bacteria prefer to adhere to a surface and cover themselves in biofilm, than to swim unprotected in the water where chlorine can kill them. We think the unique environment inside the biofilm helps convert urea and other organic compounds into DBP’s. We postulate that inhibiting biofilm reduces the production of DBP. The product could also have a direct effect on the DBP produced in the pool. We know the concentration is significantly decreased. We don’t quite yet know how.
PoolNaturally® Plus and swimming performance
We know competitive swimmers like training in water conditioned with PoolNaturally® Plus. We know that swimmers with asthma report that they don’t use their inhalers when they swim in outdoor or indoor pools where water is treated with PoolNaturally® Plus. We also know that lifeguards and aquatic professionals report fewer respiratory problems working around pools with PoolNaturally® Plus. We don’t know if their training and eventual performance is improved, and it will take time and study to know if the reactive airway disease, DNA changes and other health effects of DBP’s are improved.
Summary
- Use of chlorine and bromine as disinfectants in pools produces disinfection byproducts that have significant health and performance effects.
- DBP’s, such as chloroform, other THMs and trihalonitrates irritate people’s eyes, skin, lungs, and central nervous system.
- Pool water conditioned with PoolNaturally® Plus reduces the “chlorine smell” in treated pools and resulted in a 75% decrease in THM in commercial pool water and 55% reduction in natatorium air.
- Patrons of pools treated with PoolNaturally® Plus report significantly less eye, skin and lung irritation.
References
Articles about asthma and chlorine:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1747493/
http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/2076de.htm
http://www.erj.ersjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/5/827
http://swimming.about.com/od/allergyandasthma/a/cl_pool_problem.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CYP/is_13_111/ai_111200649/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626429/
Chloroform and effects on humans:
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthguidelines/chloroform/recognition.html
THMs and bladder and colorectal cancer:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1477-3163-3-2.pdf
More about Paddock Evacuator Company’s Chloramine Evacuation System:
http://www.paddockevacuator.com/about_evacuator.html
More about Creative Water Solutions’ PoolNaturally® Plus system:
Creative Water Solutions Involved in Energy Efficient Makeover at Debbie Meyer Swim School
Creative Water Solutions is proud to announce its involvement and support of the Debbie Meyer Swim School Makeover Project.
Check out the exciting makeover at the Debbie Meyer Swim School and all the various energy savings that can be achieved by applying current knowledge and the latest technologies to maintain superior water clarity and sanitation
Creative Water Solutions is Recognized by The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for Their Work with St. Paul Public Pools
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency will be awarding Creative Water Solutions for its work with the city of St. Paul and their public pools. With the help of Creative Water Solutions and its Sphagnum moss products, the city of St. Paul dramatically reduced chemical usage at all of their municipal pools. Creative Water Solutions’ Sphagnum moss product has been solely responsible for saving St. Paul over $70,000 by reducing both chemical usage and maintenance/labor hours.
The award will be given at the Minnesota State Fair on August 31, 2011 in the EcoExperience Building.
If you would like to learn more about Creative Water Solutions work with The City of St. Paul and the award, click on the video link.
According to Plymouth Magazine- Two Must-Try Green Products
Creative Water Solutions has been recognized by Plymouth Magazine for having two must-try green products. The article features the city of Plymouth and the plethora of sustainable services, businesses and initiatives it has to offer. The six part series showcases the local green movement. Read more at Plymouth Magazine.
Local water park the first in the world to use a specific variety of moss to treat their water
A local water park is said to be the only water park in the world using a revolutionary method to condition their water and it’s completely green.
Chaos water park in Eau Claire is using a fraction of the chemicals and chlorine they once used because PoolNaturally. A product made from Sphagnum moss that’s imported from New Zealand but the future of this water treatment system is a bit closer to home.
Click on the link for the full story: First water park in the world to use sphagnum moss to treat water
Opening your pool this summer the PoolNaturally® way!
If you are a new or returning PoolNaturally® user, here are our suggestions for a more natural pool opening:
Spring Start Up/Opening
Install the PoolNaturally® system at the beginning of the pool season for best results, but better late than never! Returning PoolNaturally users report much easier pool start up the following summer. Excellent opening results are seen even if users installed PoolNaturally as late as August of the last pool season.
Start with a fresh filter
Remove filter media (sand, DE) and replace with fresh media if you are just starting the PoolNaturally system. If you have a cartridge filter, for best results replace it or please ensure the cartridge is well cleaned. Why? If you are new to PoolNaturally, your pool has years of accumulation of biofilm and the filter will contain a large amount of it. The easiest way to get rid of much of it fast is to change out the media or replace the cartridge filter.
If you used PoolNaturally last season, be sure to backwash the sand filter after filling your pool with water. Place cleaned or new cartridge filters back in the system.
Less is more!
When starting/opening your pool, know what you are putting in it! If you used PoolNaturally last summer, don’t start by adding shock, algaecides and cyanuric acid. Expect that your pool will start up with a minimum amount of additives.
-Add chlorine to get desired free chlorine.
-Adjust pH, alkalinity, hardness , and CYA to recommended levels below:
- Free chlorine 1-2 ppm
- pH 7.2-7.6
- Alkalinity 40-120
- Hardness 200-300
- CYA *less than 20 ppm
-Once water has been balanced, add PoolNaturally® PoolRefills to PoolNaturally® contact chamber according to the dosage chart below. It is important that once there is enough water in your pool to start the pumps, get it balanced and add PoolRefills as soon as possible, to begin experiencing the conditioning effects of moss.
How Your Pool Will Change With PoolNaturally
Depending on the age and how much your pool is used, there could be a lot of material (including scale) that is shed from the pipes, pumps, heater, and pool surfaces – this is evidence that the PoolNaturally system is working! Use a pool vacuum to get rid of the larger particles that settle out in the pool and clean or backwash filters to get rid of the smaller particles.
Maintain 1-2 ppm of chlorine – you won’t need anything higher. With PoolNaturally, your pool is no longer precariously on the edge of ‘going bad.’ It will take less chlorine to maintain this 1-2 ppm free available chlorine, so turn down your automatic chlorinator or salt generator to the lowest settings.
Sand Filtration: the GOOD, the BAD, and the UGLY
Anyone who owns, cares for, or cares about pools, spas or any kind of recreational water, knows that water filtration is an integral part of every water system. Using sand for filtration is commonly used on recreational and residential pools and large spas. Here are some of my observations, thoughts and concerns about sand filtration.
The Good
Sand is cheap, plentiful, and when it is a particle, it works well as a filter medium.
The Bad
Sand filters are usually filled, sealed and the sand is forgotten. The commonly held belief is that back washing the sand periodically, “fluffs it up” and returns the sand to a particle state where it can again work its magic as a particulate filter. Some sand filters have never been opened for 5-10 years to inspect the sand.
Back-washing the sand filter is costly. Water lost during back washing needs to be replaced, heated and treated. Ideally, the pool operators backwash often enough to keep the sand working as a filter, but do not needlessly back wash so water, heat, chemicals and time aren’t wasted.
The Ugly
Inspecting and analyzing the sand from pool sand filters in both residential and commercial pools has been enlightening, to say the least. At the bottom and sides of many filters we found sandstone. Actual sand in the process of forming sandstone. It wasn’t the gravel that is often put down underneath the sand, but sandstone. The sand in those filters was anywhere from 2-10 years old. The sand that wasn’t rock was sticky and foul. When we tested it in our laboratory, we found that it was full of biofilm.
The Hypothesis
We know that in an aqueous environment that contains bacteria, biofilm forms on every surface. To be effective, filters have enormous surface area whether they are made from sand, charcoal, paper, glass or diatomaceous earth. The particles become covered with biofilm over time. Biofilm is very sticky so the particles stick together. As time and pressure continue to pack the biofilm-coated particles together they eventually become rock. So what happens during backwashing? The water will take the path of least resistance. We observed in these filters that there were channels in the sand. We think that the water follows channels through the sand that have become established over time.
We know that backwashing will not remove biofilm. In fact there are very few things that will remove biofilm. Strong acid or base solutions work but they destroy the filter, pumps, valves etc. We have demonstrated that a flush used in spas removes 90% of laboratory created biofilm in one hour, and that many other solutions that claim to remove biofilm don’t.
Getting Better Results
We also have observed that sand in filters where the water is treated with PoolNaturally® Plus (the commercial version of the residential product PoolNaturally®) appears to remain as particles. We think this is why we needed to backwash filters with PoolNaturally Plus much less often than those with conventional water treatment.
By understanding the relationship between biofilm, filters and water we are aiming to create biofilm free aquatic systems that require less chemicals, maintenance, and unwanted side effects.
Swimming Pools and Asthma
During our test this last summer at the St. Paul, MN outdoor aquatic park we surveyed the swimmers twice a week. One of the most striking findings was that swimmers with asthma did not need to use their inhalers when swimming in the pools that were conditioned with PoolNaturally Plus. We then treated the indoor aquatic park in St. Paul and had similar results.
Able to Swim Again
In fact one lady wrote to me about her inability to swim indoors due to her asthma. She was a competitive swimmer in her younger years and had to stop swimming because of severe breathing problems from asthma caused by the air in the pool. She heard about the sphagnum moss treated pools and how people could swim without using their inhalers so she tried swimming again. She reported that she could do a full workout without breathing problems and thanked me for “giving her back her favorite sport”.
With a little research the relationship between recreational and home water, chlorine and asthma became clear.
The Chemical Reactions
Here is what happens when we use chlorine to sanitize water in a pool or in our municipal water supply. As it turns out chlorine is not the problem. A byproduct of chlorine and biological molecules that contain nitrogen is the formation chloramines. These chloramines come in many different forms such as mono, di, and trichloramines. One of these compounds, a molecule called trinitrochlorine, has been implicated in causing airway irritation.
Trinitrochlorine is a volatile molecule that is extremely irritating to tissues such as your eyes, skin and airways. Because the molecule is volatile, it rises to the surface of water and is easily inhaled. In fact, in a pool, the levels of trichloronitrate are highest in the air right on top of the water. So every time a swimmer takes a breath, they inhale an irritant that causes airway constriction called reactive airway disease. The smell we all associate with a chlorine pool is actually the smell of the multiple species of chloamines, not chlorine. The problem is that chlorine is so reactive, it immediately finds and combines with nitrogen containing compounds to create chloramines..
Correlation between Pools and Asthma
A recent study reported in the pediatric literature, showed that children who are repeatedly exposed to swimming pools have a significantly higher incidence of reactive airway disease or asthma, than those who aren’t exposed to pools.
In our research laboratory, we are currently studying why the pools treated with PoolNaturally Plus don’t cause this reactive airway response, skin irritation, or burning eyes and don’t smell. We know that for chlorine to become trichloronitrate you need chlorine, nitrogen containing biological molecules and a low pH. It could be that the amount of biofilm in the pool correlates with the amount of trichloronitrate because biofilm contains and produces huge amounts of nitrogen containing molecules and it creates a local microenvironment that has a very low pH. It could therefore be the “engine” that drives the formation of these toxic molecules. In the laboratory we know that the moss in PoolNaturally Plus inhibits the formation of biofilm and if our hypothesis is correct it could greatly reduce the formation of chlorine to trichloronitrate by removing the primary nitrogen source, the biofilm . We will find out with further research
Cyanuric Acid and Last Summer’s Journey
This last summer we added our Sphagnum moss pool product to the Highland Park Aquatic Center in St. Paul. We treated two pools. One was a 430,000 gallon Olympic pool and the other was a 22,500 gallon children’s activity pool. You can read about the results on our website.
One lesson we learned involved cyanuric acid, outdoor pools, and chlorine. The accepted dogma is that cyanuric acid is required for outdoor pools and spas to stabilize the chlorine against UV degradation. In fact, most granular or solid chlorine sold in stores is stabilized with cyanuric acid. Dichlor and Trichlor have cyanuric acid in the formula.
When cyanuric acid interferes with chlorine
We started to try and understand the chemistry and science of cyanuric acid because of its side effects. Cyanuric acid above a certain concentration (which is dependent on pH) inhibits chlorine’s (hypochlorous acid to be precise) ability to oxidize bacteria. Failure to oxidize means no killing.
We also found that cyanuric acid is denser than water so it sinks to the bottom of a body of water. Therefore, the level of cyanuric acid on the surface of the pool or spa is the lowest level in the pool and it increases from there to the bottom. It will be the highest in the deepest part of the pool.
We tested this at the Olympic-sized pool. We sampled water at the bottom, middle and top of the pool. The cyanuric acid was set for 40 ppm. At the surface the level was 30-40 ppm, in the middle it was 60-70 ppm and at the bottom it was 100 ppm. From the middle of the pool to the bottom hypochlorous acid was essentially ineffective.
The other fact about cyanuric is that it is nonvolatile. That means as you add more and more to your pool or spa the concentration continues to increase. The only way to decrease the concentration is to empty some water and replace it with fresh water without cyanuric acid so you dilute out the chemical. In places where the spa or pool is full all year long, the concentration of cyanuric acid can increase to the point where the pool has no effective chlorine. I think this is why most pools have algae outbreaks starting in the bottom of the pool. The high cyanuric acid levels inhibit hypochlorous acid so no killing of algae occurs.
The experiment
So, after we learned this, I decided to decrease the cyanuric acid level in the pools gradually to see if it is really needed. The pool engineers told me “if you do that there will be no free chlorine in this pool in the morning.” We agreed to decrease cyanuric acid by 10 ppm each week and monitor the results. The free chlorine levels never decreased and the combined chlorine remained at 0. We decreased the cyanuric acid to zero and never added any more for the rest of the summer. The levels slowly decreased to zero as makeup water diluted out the cyanuric acid. The children’s activity pool behaved exactly the same.
In another pool we treated we were able to manage the large pool all summer without any cyanuric acid and maintained free chlorine levels from 1-3 ppm with no combined chlorine all summer.
Water treated with moss doesn’t need cyanuric acid
The bottom line is that with moss treated water, cyanuric acid is not needed. The mechanism for this probably centers around biofilm. I don’t think that cyanuric acid prevents chlorine from UV degradation or the free chlorine levels would have decreased in the outdoor pools we treated. We know the moss inhibits biofilm formation in the laboratory and know that biofilm absorbs chlorine. We know that free chlorine levels skyrocket when moss is added to the pool and to maintain a level of 1-3 ppm free chlorine, the chlorine added to the pool decreases by over half. So a pool with moss doesn’t need cyanuric acid. That allows the chlorine added to the pool to remain active providing effective microbial control.
New York Times covers Successful St. Paul – CWS Summer Test
Great New York Times Article:
As its license plates proclaim, Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
Now a Minneapolis-area company says it has figured out the secret to the state’s famously crystalline watering holes: moss.
Specifically, species of sphagnum moss that the start-up, Creative Water Solutions, envisions will keep tens of thousands of swimming pools clean while drastically reducing the use of chlorine and other harsh chemicals.
Read the full article: Clean Pools, Less Chlorine … With Moss? (Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com)
