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New Scientific Test Finds Up To 75 Liters of Urine In Public Pools (theguardian.com)
Scientists have developed a test designed to estimate how much urine has been covertly added to a large volume of water. "The test works by measuring the concentration of an artificial sweetener, acesulfame potassium (ACE), that is commonly found in processed food and passed through the body unaltered," reports The Guardian. The findings are published in the American Chemical Society journal. From the report: 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 liters of urine -- enough to fill a medium-sized dustbin -- into a large pool (about 830,000 liters, one-third the size of an Olympic pool) and 30 liters into a second pool, around half the size of the first. 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. The findings make for unwelcome reading, but swimmers might find some comfort in the measurements from eight hot tubs, which were found to have far higher urine levels. One hotel Jacuzzi had more than three times the concentration of sweetener than in the worst swimming pool. In total, the team sampled 31 different pools and tubs in two Canadian cities and found ACE to be present in 100% of the samples, with concentrations up to 570 times the background level in tap water samples. They used the average ACE concentration in Canadian urine to convert their measurements into approximate volumes of urine.
That works out to around 0.009% urine content.
I can live with that.
Captcha: "manure"
First - this is a copy/paste from Soylent. I thought they were supposed to be trying to be like Slashdot, not the other way around? We're used to mainstream news beating Slashdot to the punch by days, but when our own RIPOFF site has news before we do, that Slashdot copies...WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK?!?
Also...this test only works for people who are using one particular artificial sweetener. Since the discussion started around Olympic swimmers - and this test probably wouldn't work in Olympic pools since those swimmers are on rigorous diets...
Welp, I guess we just shift it to try being more topical.
At least it's outside your body. Think of what happens when you go to a public bathroom that smells bad: what you're breathing was previously inside someone. I mean, the actual molecules that are entering your nose used to be part of someone else digestive system. Maybe even more than one person.
That's a lot worse than a bucket of piss diluted in a big pool filled with chlorine.
lucm, indeed.
And frankly, who gives a shit.
You sweat the same stuff as you get in pee. You're covered in this stuff already. You're probably get more of someone else's on you from shaking hands with someone than you do from jumping in the pool.
And unless you have a bladder infection, pee is sterile.
There's no reason for concern, and what's more, people don't want to know. There was a vogue for putting chemicals in the pool that turned purple when they mixed with pee. Guess what? No-one uses them any more, because thinking about swimming in someone else's pee is far more of a (mental) health hazard than actually swimming in someone else's (highly diluted) pee.