Peeing in the pool is one of those minor crimes that most of us don’t think is that serious. We know we shouldn’t do it, but seeing as the chlorine kills the bacteria anyway it hardly matters, right? And anyway, no one will ever know…
Unfortunately though this line of thinking is somewhat mislead. It is indeed true that chlorine will destroy the bacteria in your pee, but the bad news is that bacteria isn’t the only compelling reason not to pee there in the first place…
The Problem With Pool Peeing
When you pee in the pool, your urine has a reaction with the chlorine which creates a gas known as cyanogen chloride. Around 60% of this gas floating around in pools is due to people using them as giant toilets in fact.
The bad news is that this stuff isn’t good for us. It can cause irritation of the skin, problems with your central nervous system, lung conditions and even heart problems. All these problems have been shown to be more common among regular swimmers.
Making matters worse is the fact that cyanogen chloride is not the only nasty by-product of your renegade pool behaviour. Pool pee also creates something called ‘nitrogen trichloramine’ which causes lung injury.
Reality Check
Adding more chlorine to the pool could help to reduce these problems, but then you’d have unpleasant water to swim in that tasted nasty and stung your eyes.
And just to make matters worse, it’s not just pee that finds its way into your swimming baths. That’s right – over 50% of pools also contain significant amounts of faecal particles. Why? Because a lot of people don’t shower before getting into the pool and apparently many of those same people don’t wipe their behinds all that thoroughly either…
11% of people swim with runny noses according to studies, and 6% swim with colds. We all know how likely you are to get verrucas and warts by walking around the changing rooms in bare feet…
So yes in short, the swimming pool isn’t the healthiest of places to be. Then again it’s not going to kill you either, and bearing in mind that most professional swimmers are still in (exceedingly) good health, you can probably carry on swimming at your public pool without worrying all too much…
At the same time though… please stop peeing in the pool.
Oh and a last thing to remember? Some pools use a special dye that makes it so that everyone can see when you’ve decided to add a little extra fluid to the water. This is really rather embarrassing, so before you relieve yourself maybe you should ask whether this is really a chance you’re willing to take?
The stuff about the dye is fake -.-