Dirty Pool
Imagine what it would feel like to swim through disinfectant, to dive into water mixed with a cleansing compound so caustic it could kill nearly any microorganism it touched. That’s just what happens every time you jump into a swimming pool with a nasty case of red, itching, burning eyes.
The research group, headed by chemist Dave Worley, has come up with a new disinfecting agent that has none of the irritating properties of common chlorine, and just a pinch of it can clean a poolful of water.
What makes chlorine so searing is its tendency to oxide, or bind chemically with organic materials. While this is what allows it to slay microorganism so effectively, these molecular couplings can produce decidedly unpleasant effects when they take place on your skin, in your eyes, or in other mucous membranes. What the Auburn group was hoping to develop was a more discriminating form of chlorine that would know when to kill and when to quit.
Such gentle disinfecting could please not only the people who use pools but also the people who maintain them. Ordinarily, water must be dosed with chlorine once a day to keep bacteria at bay. But ABC’s chlorine is released so slowly that a single treatment can last several months.
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The research group, headed by chemist Dave Worley, has come up with a new disinfecting agent that has none of the irritating properties of common chlorine, and just a pinch of it can clean a poolful of water.
What makes chlorine so searing is its tendency to oxide, or bind chemically with organic materials. While this is what allows it to slay microorganism so effectively, these molecular couplings can produce decidedly unpleasant effects when they take place on your skin, in your eyes, or in other mucous membranes. What the Auburn group was hoping to develop was a more discriminating form of chlorine that would know when to kill and when to quit.
Such gentle disinfecting could please not only the people who use pools but also the people who maintain them. Ordinarily, water must be dosed with chlorine once a day to keep bacteria at bay. But ABC’s chlorine is released so slowly that a single treatment can last several months.
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