After 10 years of competitive swimming, 5 summers as an MA State lifeguard, and many more years on the pool decks in the Marine Corps, I thought that I had seen it all (at the pool anyway). I was wrong! Last night while doing a swim workout at a local pool with a few other triathletes I noticed that several several of us were coughing a lot. Something in the air wasn’t right. This morning I woke up with what felt like an elephant on my chest. I e-mailed one of my friends. He told me that he had spoken with one of the pool managers and that; “a lifeguard had spread Di-Chlor granules on the pool deck last night to kill algae. It gives off chlorine gas when it reacts, which sits on top of the water. Below is a link to the material data safety sheet… http://www.aldenleeds.com/html/dichlor_granules.html”
Pretty nasty stuff. I can still taste it, or something. So if you see the pool crew cleaning the deck while you are swimming, maybe it might be prudent to ask what chemicals they are using. Maybe just get out of the water and do something else for the day’s training.
Sounds like you just experienced a World War I - western front re-enactment right down to the mustard gas…
Way back when I was a kid, one of my Dad’s buddies was adding chemicals to his pool one day. He decided to dump everything into one bucket and add the mixture all at once. It immediately started bubbling and throwing out a gas. he quickly pushed bucket into the pool wiht a broom handle before he re-enacted the Union Carbide accient in India.
I thought this thread was going to be about a different kind of gas! You have to keep a good distance from your training partners, sometimes. Speaking of chlorine, though, the pool I worked summers at in college had a gas chlorination system which sprang a leak one time. Nasty business–several people had to go to the hospital with chemical burns in the lungs and esophogas. You could see where the cloud went because all the grass was killed.
As I undestand it, if you mix that stablizer with the chlorine, you basically get mustard gas. The guy who resurfaced my pool apparently got injured by it one time, I guess fairly seriously.
Wow, that is amazing. Is this the process when they are running the “scrubber” over the floor in the evening just before the pools closes? I see the guys at my local pool doing that all the time. I assumed it was just scrubbing the pool deck. There doesn’t appear to be any chemicals involved.
The only pollution I’ve had at the pool was when I was driving there last Saturday morning and saw my ex going in there and decided to come back to the store to ride the Computrainer instead!
“Is this the process when they are running the “scrubber” over the floor in the evening just before the pools closes?”
Yep, this was happening about 8:30 PM or so. I think they were using brooms to scrub. I also remember one of them using a wet-vac. I really wasn’t paying too much attention to them. Frankly, I wasn’t thinking anything of it. I’m not sure why the harsh chemicals instead of good ole’ Clorox. It might be that this pool is really an outdoor pool with a bubble over it, and the pool deck is concrete vice tile. Who knows…
