Swimming Pools and the Ozone layer

[Anders Hoveland]

Does the chlorine in swimming pools contribute to depletion of the ozone layer?

 

It is known, for example, that chlorine reacts with acetone at room temperature to form chloroacetone, which could potentially find its way up to the ozone layer and cause problems. Consider this: a swimmer with diabetes, when going through ketoacidosis, can emitt acetone from their breath and skin. Should we be keeping people with diabetes away from pools?

 

If elemental chlorine is too reactive to make its way into the ozone layer, what exactly does it react with that neutralizes it?

[iNow]

Does the chlorine in swimming pools contribute to depletion of the ozone layer?

Perhaps on a very tiny scale, but you're example seems to be oblivious to the concept of magnitude and proportionality. It's as if you're asking if you spill a drop of rat poison into the ocean if every fish on the planet will die.

 

 

Consider this: a swimmer with diabetes, when going through ketoacidosis, can emitt acetone from their breath and skin. Should we be keeping people with diabetes away from pools?

Again, you seem oblivious to the concept of scale and magnitude. Further, even if your claim had some merit, it is still inaccurate. It is not "people with diabetes" which should be your focus, but instead people experiencing hyperglycemia.

[John Cuthber]

It's even more absurdly wrong than that.

People (hyperglycaemic or not) emit a whole bunch of volatile organic compounds.

However the amount that we contribute is much less than that produced by plants and other animals.

These get into the atmosphere.

They will react with any chlorine there.

Typically half the chlorine is immediately converted to HCl by that reaction.

HCl is very soluble in water and will be washed out by the next shower of rain.

The other half of the chlorine is attached to the organic molecule, but it's not likely to stay there.

Any organochlorine compound is thermodynamically unstable in the presence of water and there's always water in the atmosphere.

Eventually the carbon- chlorine bond will be hydrolysed. The products will be the corresponding alcohol and (again) HCl.

The only question is how fast is the hydrolysis (or other destruction reaction).

Adding other functional groups to the molecule like ketone groups is likely to make the hydrolysis faster.

 

The reason that CFCs get to the ozone layer is that they are unusually stable- the hydrolysis reactions are slow.

 

So, even if you kept people away from swimming pools it wouldn't stop their exhaled organics reacting with chlorine from pools.

If it reacts then it doesn't matter much because practically all of it will me scavenged out by rain before it gets anywhere near the stratosphere.

 

Much more chlorine will reach the stratosphere as a result of chlorination of drinking water.

Many diabetics benefit from exercise and, for some of them, swimming will be their preferred form of exercise.

 

A suggestion that these people refrain from doing something that will help their condition, on the basis of a non-existent effect on the ozone layer is, to say the least, unhelpful.

[JorgeLobo]

This speaks to risk avoidance (ala "precautionary principle") rather than risk assessment.