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Wrong Chemical Dumped Into Olympic Pools Made Them Green (arstechnica.com)
Z00L00K writes: [Ars Technica reports:] "After a week of trying to part with green tides in two outdoor swimming pools, Olympic officials over the weekend wrung out a fresh mea culpa and yet another explanation -- neither of which were comforting. According to officials, a local pool-maintenance worker mistakenly added 160 liters of hydrogen peroxide to the waters on August 5, which partially neutralized the chlorine used for disinfection. With chlorine disarmed, the officials said that 'organic compounds' -- i.e. algae and other microbes -- were able to grow and turn the water a murky green in the subsequent days. The revelation appears to contradict officials' previous assurances that despite the emerald hue, which first appeared Tuesday, the waters were safe." I would personally have avoided using the green pools, but that's just me. "Hydrogen peroxide is sometimes used in pools -- often to de-chlorinate them," reports Ars. "Basically, the chemical, a common household disinfectant, is a weak acid that reacts with chlorine and chlorine-containing compounds to release oxygen and form other chlorine-containing compounds. Those may not be good at disinfecting pools, but they still may be picked up by monitoring systems. Hydrogen peroxide can also be used to disinfect pools but must be maintained in the waters -- not a one-time dumping -- and can't be used in combination with chlorine." Apparently, the green water irritates eyes and smells like farts.
I do feel the color options for Olympic pools could be greatly expanded. Green and a slight blue are not enough, We should have red pools and purple pools as well. Deep blues and pinks wouldn't go amiss either. But not yellow pools, that might be distracting.
Just happened to have 100+ gallons of hydrogen peroxide sitting around.
More likely, they tried to be clever and use it in an attempt to sanitize the pool after a test for high bacterial load.
Not on the news in every part of the world. And it took a while from submission to presentation where the editor obfuscated the content as well, original submission here: https://slashdot.org/submissio...
The fact that someone screwed up is one thing, but it's good to also get some information on what the screwup was and the consequences of it - that it wasn't entirely safe from a health point of view. At least it didn't create mustard gas.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The revelation appears to contradict officials' previous assurances that despite the emerald hue, which first appeared Tuesday, the waters were safe.
How does this work? You don't want tons of algae growing in your pool, but there's nothing particularly dangerous about it. It reduces the ability of chlorine to sanitize the water, which still doesn't make the pools "unsafe", and since they reportedly dumped in a bunch of extra chlorine anyway (that's what was irritating the athletes' eyes)... Again, how does this contradict the officials' previous statements?
I'm not a pool expert, maybe there's something I don't know here, but you can't just throw in a sentence like that and offer nothing to back it up. I even checked the article and everything (going above and beyond here) - nada.
If we're going back to the old school complaints about story timeliness, maybe we can also go back to old school summaries and keep up with the scientific explanations..you know, smells like sulfur or whatever.
"Smells like farts" ...making America great again I guess.
It's not nearly as simple as that. In terms of outdoor water supplies, I'm not sure it's particularly dangerous. Bacteria break down quickly in tropical water, though viruses are a bigger problem. But there are plenty of nasty water supplies in other places. For example, there are brain eating amoebas that live in deeper water in the United States. While water treatment means human activities don't pollute the water like in Brazil, plenty of other nasty things can live there, including things that don't die as readily outside of the tropics.
As for the diving well, it's a mistake that shouldn't happen, but sounds like the result of human error. Can you trust pools in the United States to be sanitary? Human error and incompetence can occur anywhere. It might be a good thing that this happened in an outdoor pool in Rio, where at least the rapid growth of the algae quickly alerted everyone that something wasn't right. It's less likely that algae would have grown quickly in an indoor pool, which might have allowed harmful things like bacteria and viruses to grow more before it became obvious there was a problem. Once the algae bloomed, adding a large amount of chlorine is one of the recommended steps to treat the problem in any pool. I don't see why human error and incompetence are inherently less likely in, say, Beijing or London. It could happen in Indianapolis, where Olympic trials take place. Can you trust a hotel pool to be safe and clean? There was at least a lot of monitoring at the Olympics to quickly test for safety and then to act accordingly. I'd bet many hotel pool are far more unhealthy than the diving well ever became. Back in 2008, one in eight public swimming pools in the United States were immediately shut down after inspection because of unsafe water or other dangerous conditions.
Also, the chemical smell that pools sometimes get is actually from chloramines, which develop from the interaction of chlorine with things like bacteria. If a pool has a strong smell, it's quite possibly unsafe. And chloramines aren't safe, either. Thats also what forms when you mix ammonia and bleach.
As for my statement about public pools: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/cdc-swimming-pools-pose-infection-risk/story?id=10711137
While the green algae blooming drew a lot of attention, I don't see this as being a result of incompetence from hosting the Olympics in Rio. I'd much rather swim in the diving well in Rio than take my chances with many public pools in the United States.
Wrong. The fact that the pool turned green was everywhere, the official explanation as to why wasn't.
While I don't care what the Athletes themselves do I pretty much have to agree the Olympics are a huge money pit for their hosts. In the Sydney games for example the games not only failed to stimulate economic growth they effectively reduced consumption. At the end of the day the games ended up costing every Australian household around $400...
I found the explanation amusing. Now I'm looking forward to the explanation of how two dangerous chemicals, sodium and chlorine, combine to form a compound essential to life.
They need to rebrand this page in yellow and black and call it "Slashdot for Dummies".
The fact the pool turned green, yes. However, the actual reason for it (hydrogen peroxide being dumped in it) was only revealed today everywhere. In between then and now, it was pure speculation as to why the pools turned green, though most people suspected algae. Most people also thought it was a shortage of chlorine and muriatic acid causing the pH to rise, not that someone dumped a pile of hydrogen peroxide.
Of course, it isn't rocket surgery how to maintain the chemical balance of a swimming pool, and most pools generally err on the side of being over chlorinated than under to keep the nasties at bay.
Um, no. This is basically putting your fingers in your ears and yelling la-la-la-la-la to avoid hearing the actual science.
Pools are treated with hypochlorite, which is one way to kill bacteria. It's one measure, in addition to filtering systems. Hydrogen peroxide can also kill bacteria, but it isn't used with hypochlorite. The result is the production of water, oxygen, and sodium chloride. Instead of hypochlorite, you'd get chlorine ions in the water. Chlorine ions won't kill bacteria and algae.
Though algae can form in indoor pools, it's more common outdoors. Testing for chlorine in the water didn't reveal anything anomalous, probably because of testing for free chlorine instead of hypochlorite. The conditions allowed the rapid growth of algae, which turned the water green. If the testing didn't reveal anything anomalous, it's possible that the contractor responsible for maintaining the pool wouldn't have noticed. The algae made it blatantly obvious there was a problem. The response was to shock the pool with calcium hypochlorite, which would make it easy to remove the algae. This also increased the hypochlorite in the pool, making it safe again. The fart smell was hydrogen sulfide, a result of the algae. The irritation was from the large amount of hypochlorite used to shock the pool.
The algae caused officials to act, which probably mitigated any impact from microbes in the pool. I'm not convinced the water in the diving well was ever particularly unsafe.
One in every eight public pools inspected in 2008 in the United States was shut down from unsafe and unsanitary conditions. I'd bet that swimming in many public pools is far more like swimming in a toilet bowl than anything that ever happened in the Olympic pool. The real issue is the complete ineptitude of the IOC and their inability to get their story straight. That said, you're probably far more likely to get sick from swimming in a public pools in the United States than swimming in the diving well in Rio. I'd much rather swim in the diving well than a hotel pool, that's for sure.
Unfortunately, there are too many knee-jerk reactions like yours that are based on an ignorance of science.
I have no problem with new venues being built, provided there's a plan to use them afterwards. That means you're not only relying on the Olympics to cover the cost. It can be opening the venue to the public or hosting more events there. It's probably best to focus on cities with many existing venues, though.
The problem is that many of the cities meeting that standard are in the United States. There's a definite IOC bias against the United States, so this isn't an appealing solution. Apparently the United States is no longer good at bribing officials, which is why they lost out on the 2022 World Cup. Never mind, of course, that Qatar has to construct 12 stadiums at immense monetary and human cost while all of the venues in the United States already exist. Many large universities in the United States have venues for their Olympic sports programs, which is an inherent advantage over most other countries.
People would throw a fit if the Olympics were regularly rotated through the United States every 12 years or so. If the IOC focused on reusing existing venues and required plans to reuse new venues, it would fit into the IOC bribe money. It would also favor countries like the United States, and there are too many people with an anti-American bias to let that happen.
Partly.
The "chlorine" smell in pools is from Chloramines - a compound made of chorine and amines (ammonia). You get more of it from urine, but it'll build up anyway from other sources. The Chloramines are also what stings and irritates the eyes, nose, and lungs.
How do you get rid of it? Raise the free chlorine level in the pool to 10 ppm or so (normal range is 1 - 3 ppm). Presto, changeo, the pool stops smelling like chlorine.
Cryptosporidium is a difficult to remove parasite that can exist in pool water. How do you treat pool water that's been contaminated with crypto? Raise the chlorine level to 10 ppm for 24 hours (20 ppm if you use stabilized chlorine).
Me? I just keep my pool between 10-20 ppm chlorine all the time. Crystal clear water, no algae, no eye irritation, no chlorine smell, no nasties in the water, no side effects at all. My kids swim in it eyes wide open for hours at a time, friends come over and say "I'm glad you don't use too much chlorine; I can't even smell it".
And the worms ate into his brain.
News24 in South Africa had the official peroxide explanation on the 14th already. http://www.sport24.co.za/OtherSport/Olympics2016/rio-diving-pool-drained-of-green-water-20160814
If the bottom end of Africa had it then, then the world had it.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Don't know about the unsafe part, but the decision to dump the pool was partly made to allow the judges and spectators to see the synchronized swimmers in action.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
However, the actual reason for it (hydrogen peroxide being dumped in it) was only revealed today everywhere.
Actually news of the hydrogen peroxide dump made the rounds on the weekend.
There's no need to defend it, it's well known enough that Slashdot is slow as far as news aggregates go. It's been the punch line of jokes as a result.
The more important question is if a story about someone stuffing up chlorine at a sporting event belongs on here at all.
Over the last 15 years, good chemists all over the world have been losing their jobs. Wages have been stagnant for 20 years. Those MBA types keep thinking any jackass can be hired to do the job. Well, this is what happens when you hire a jackass to do chemistry. You get green pools to put out for the whole freaking world to see. And you end up looking cheap and stupid. Well, us chemists are laughing our asses off while we stand in the unemployment line.
Exactly,
Look at Utah (where the games made a profit), all our venues are in use year round. and the village became student housing at the University of Utah as planned. During the winter athletes train and compete at the venues but they are also open to the public to enjoy and try out which serves to recruit new athletes to some of the more obscure events (Lake Placid is the home to the only other bob sled and luge track in the country). And during the summer we find uses for the venues as well. The Ski Jump landing slopes became mega water slides during the summer.
The problem is when host cities throw money at getting the games with no plans beyond the closing ceremonies of the Paralympic games. We not only made a profit during the games but had plans for maintaining and using the venues afterwards.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
What FC (free chlorine) level is necessary to maintain a sanitized pool is entirely dependent on the current CYA (stabilizer) level. The more stabilizer present, the higher FC level that is needed. CYA is needed to protect FC from UV light but too much is a bad thing. For example, if you have 30 ppm CYA, you MUST maintain at least 2 ppm FC or greater at all times. If your CYA is at 60 ppm, you must maintain at least 5 ppm FC or greater at all times. This is for normal, daily sanitation. Minimum FC = 7.5% of CYA level. Indoor pools, it's not necessary to use CYA, but low amounts (10-30 ppm) can help buffer the harshness of chlorine and allow for easier maintenance of FC levels. Also, to clear a pool of algae, how high you need to raise the FC to fully eliminate algae depends on CYA level. Many times it takes longer than 24 hours of maintaining this higher FC level to clear the algae depending on how much algae, filtration capability... etc. For example, if your CYA is at 60 ppm, you'd need to elevate the FC to 24 ppm and keep it there until the algae is gone. "Shock" level FC is 40% of CYA level.
He who forgets will be destined to remember. - EV
I'm an engineer with an MBA.
As am I. I went to business school concurrently with my engineering masters to learn how to better manage the projects I work on. Frankly there are a lot of bitter engineers here on Slashdot that are looking for a scapegoat for what they perceive (sometimes rightly) as injustices in the workplace. Blaming "MBAs" is their modern version of blaming Jews or moneylenders as an easily demonized group that in reality has little or nothing to do with the actual problems. It's just tribal scapegoating. There are just as many incompetent engineers as there are incompetent business majors. I run into both almost daily.
I treat anyone who blames "MBAs" with a sort of corollary to Godwin's law. As a discussion progresses the probability of some idiot scapegoating "MBAs" for a problem approaches 1. If they blame MBAs for a problem they no longer have a reasoned argument to make based on actual facts and so they lose the argument and the discussion is over.
Nothing in my studies ever suggested to cut corners for short term profits. It was focused on long term growth strategies and employee development. To remain globally competitive you have to build from within.
This is 100% true. I remember several case studies being used to highlight the dangers of seeking short term profits through financial engineering. The professors took substantial pains to show how short term profit seeking will often backfire long term and damage a company.
The companies that are off shoring functions will most likely find themselves in more trouble a few years down the road.
I've actually done some work in global sourcing and I can confirm this anecdotally. Offshoring tends to result in all sorts of management headaches and quality problems. Send work to China and you'd better have someone actually in China to keep an eye on things. I had a client some years ago who blew up their supply chain and sent work all over the place and only then realized that it caused all sorts of quality, logistics and lead time problems. Not to mention that shipping parts halfway around the world often eats away much of the savings.
Ok, I'll plow into this.
Pool chemistry is, well, chemistry. And despite the offhand IOC statement that "chemistry is not an exact science", chemistry is science. And it's an excellent topic for /.
Maintaining my little 10,000 gallon play pool has been an interesting adventure;
- In Arizona, sunlight and temperature conspire to make pool maintenance a challenge; sunlight by itself both encourages everything you don't want in your pool (algae and bacteria for two) and decomposes chlorine, your most common disinfectant and algaecide.
- Cyanuric Acid (CYA), used as a chlorine stabilizer, also binds chlorine so that it is ineffective as a disinfectant etc. And it does not, itself, decompose easily or quickly. CYA is used in residential pools to simplify management (intermittent filtering and circulation mean chlorine levels would fluctuate without stablizer) and to reduce cost (burnt off chlorine requires adding more). Commercial pools don't typically need this, and indoor pools even less.
- Chlorine tablets (most commonly Trichloro-S-Triazinetrione) and much granulated chlorine (commonly Calcium Hypochlorite, so-called 'shock') contain CYA, and each bit you use adds CYA to your pool, eventually increasing the concentration to the point that it renders chlorine ineffective.
- Now you get to increase the amount of chlorine you use, also increasing the CYA, and the effect compounds itself.
- The solution is to drain the pool, reducing the concentrations, and add your chlorine sources to restore the level, starting the cycle again. Yes, you do.
- I now use an erosion dispenser that doesn't float, and it works insanely well. CYA levels of 110ppm force my free chlorine levels to test 1ppm, but the pool is clear and free of algae and detectable contaminants.
- Commercial and Olympic pools would never use erosion dispensers. I expect them to use gas systems. And using CYA is wrong for these pools because they should be constantly dispensed, constantly monitored, and chlorine expense is
So my challenges are different than those at the Games, but similar in some details.
I tried liquid chlorine (Sodium Hypochlorate, Clorox without the perfume and higher concentrate) for a while, but it's not as effective and requires constantly measuring and pouring, whereas tablets dissolve (erode, hence those floaters called erosion dispensers) without intervention or attention beyond filling it when they are gone. I gave that up without buying or trying to build an automated dispenser, just not worth it yet.
The problem at the Olympics has been well discussed, but from my view as a residential pool owner:
0. They let the chemistry get out of hand. I expect such a pool, at such an event, to be constantly monitored. Inexcusable.
1. Having let it get out of hand, a proper shock by adjusting the pH and alkalinity, using, for instance, a disodiumsalt of ethylenediaminetetraaceticaciddihydratediammoniumsulfate (this is a proprietary product that works), then Calcium Hypochlorate or other chlorine should have cleared the pool overnight. It does mine, even in 90 overnight temps, the only difference being quantities. A filter aid would clear the milky residue that we saw on TV. This process can be used to successfully clear a pool in 12 hours.
2. Using Hydrogen Peroxide wasn't just a mistake, it was malpractice, and I would fire the nimrod that decided that. It is incompatible with chlorine, period. Huge mistake.
3. the filters should be running constantly, not because of demand but because of the critical nature of maintenance. These are used throughout most of the day, are critical to the Games, and no excuses. Similarly the disinfectant systems. It's not about the cost, it's about the money.
4. Each pool should have had its own filtration and disinfectant systems. Of course.
I give the maintenance teams a grade of F. Just incompetent in these pools, and no such failure is acceptable.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You beat me to writing the exact post I was about to write. Completely mind blowingly unacceptable maintenance. When my pool goes green, its because I was out of town for 2 weeks and didn't pay anyone to check it and forgot to top off the chlorinator, but sometimes I have more impotant things to handle than whether my pool is readily swimmable. As far as cyanuric acid is concerned, I was blown away when i discovered the relationshi between CYA, chlorine, and the effect of sunlight on the pool. At 50ppm CYA, you need like 3-5 ppm chlorine to keep the pool clean, and sunlight prevents the chlorine from breaking down as fast, but it makes shocking it very expensive if you forget your pool for a week and it turns green. Meanwhile, at a CYA level of 0, it might only take .25 to .5 ppm to keep it clean and as little as 1-2 to shock a green pool, but with no CYA, sunlight will destroy the chlorine instantly.
In the middle levels of 10-30 CYA, you don't need as a high of a chlorine reading, and sun doesn't destroy the chlorine instantly, but you still need to watch it, BUT you can also dose less chlorine when you do.
Its when the CYA gets up to like 100 that even shocking the pool becomes difficult because you need like 20ppm and even in a 24' 4' deep above ground, thats like 2 whole gallons of shock, and you might need to do that more than once. Gets expensive quick... easier just to keep the chlorine and cya levels lower.