How much pee is in our swimming pools?

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lars63
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How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by lars63 »

Is this more information than you needed?

Olympic swimmers admit to it and it seems many of the rest us are peeing in the water too, with a new scientific test finding up to 75 litres of urine in public pools
It is an antisocial act that normally goes under the radar, but many swimmers have long suspected the truth: people are peeing in the pool.
Now scientists have been able to confirm the full extent of offending for the first time, after developing a test designed to estimate how much urine has been covertly added to a large volume of water. Regular swimmers with a keen sense of hygiene may wish to stop reading now.
The test works by measuring the concentration of an artificial sweetener, acesulfame potassium (ACE), that is commonly found in processed food and passes through the body unaltered.
After tracking the levels of the sweetener in two public pools in Canada over a three-week period they calculated that swimmers had released 75 litres of urine – enough to fill a medium-sized dustbin – into a large pool (about 830,000 litres, one-third the size of an Olympic pool) and 30 litres into a second pool, around half the size of the first.
Lindsay Blackstock, a graduate student at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and lead author, said: “Our study provides additional evidence that people are indeed urinating in public pools and hot tubs.”
Although the researchers were unable to confirm exactly what fraction of visitors were choosing to quietly relieve themselves in the water rather than making the shivery trip to the changing rooms, the results suggest that the urine content was being topped up several times each day.
“We did not monitor the number of pool users over the three week time period ... so there is no way we could estimate the number of individual urination events per day,” said Blackstock. Read More:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... -the-truth
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SoM
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by SoM »

did it twice :paranoid:
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Eraser
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by Eraser »

75 liters in a say, 800,000 liter pool means that if you drink a glass (250ml) of pool water you'd digest about 0,02ml (or 20 microlitre) of urine.
However, since there's usually something like chlorine in the pool which breaks down the urine, you're never actually swallowing urine. You are swallowing cyanogen chloride though, which is considered a chemical warfare agent, but that's a whole different story :)
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CZghost
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by CZghost »

I did it in Macha's Lake so many times that it would be filled now entirely with my urine :D Nobody ever noticed and water exchange natural process did the magic for me :)
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scared?
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by scared? »

Lol at morons who call bleach chlorine...
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seremtan
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by seremtan »

yes, this is more information than i needed

thanks for asking OP
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Whiskey 7
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by Whiskey 7 »

I came across this little gem on a similar note and thought to share :)
To those among us who enjoy a glass of wine and those who don't and are always seen with a bottle of water in their hand: As Ben Franklin reputedly said: In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.

In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 litre of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. Coli) - bacteria found in feces.

In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop annually.. However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or rum, whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and fermenting.

Remember: Water = Poop, Wine = Health

Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of Shit.
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Eraser
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by Eraser »

Good to see there's no source cited there Whiskey. I very much doubt this is true.
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seremtan
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by seremtan »

source: California Wine Growers Association, in partnership with Coors :|
tnf
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by tnf »

There's some amount of fecal bacteria on a lot of the stuff that you touch that someone else has touched, and urine is sterile unless its from someone with a UTI- so frankly the piss in the pool is not as bad what you deal with every day of your life.
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seremtan
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by seremtan »

also, whenever you smell a fart it means you're breathing in fecal particles
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Eraser
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by Eraser »

tnf wrote:urine is sterile
Turns out it's not:
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-d ... r-rest-you
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by tnf »

Eraser wrote:
tnf wrote:urine is sterile
Turns out it's not:
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-d ... r-rest-you
I guess that one has to fall under the same category as pissing on jellyfish stings.

Makes sense though, there are bacteria in the urinary tract so it would be logical that some exit the body in the urine.

Perhaps better to say 'not usually infectious' unless its from dirty people with the bad bacteria. Of all the things in the pool, it still ranks down there
in terms of what I'd be concerned about.
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Eraser
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by Eraser »

Yeah true.
I'd worry more about that one kid's used bandaid floating around
scared?
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by scared? »

Everything u thought u was true is most like false...FACT!...
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plained
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by plained »

scared? wrote:Everything u thought u was true is most like false...FACT!...
quated for truth
it is about time!
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plained
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by plained »

Eraser wrote:
tnf wrote:urine is sterile
Turns out it's not:
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-d ... r-rest-you
how the fuck did the world need "lol science" to find out rotten piss in dirty

ffs do u think a screwdriver user should be certified and licensed ?
it is about time!
scared?
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by scared? »

i feel like pissing on kyle...
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Whiskey 7
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Re: How much pee is in our swimming pools?

Post by Whiskey 7 »

seremtan wrote:also, whenever you smell a fart it means you're breathing in fecal particles
You know, I have never thought of it that way but guess you're correct in some way.... Googles odours* and scents

*Grrr, spelling around the globe :smirk:
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