There is currently no such urine indicator dye that exists. "Chlorine and other disinfectants are added to a swimming pool to destroy germs. Peeing in a pool depletes chlorine and actually produces an irritant that makes people's eyes turn red," said Michele Hlavsa, chief of the CDC's Healthy Swimming Program.
No. There is no chemical which changes color when someone urinates in a swimming pool. There are dyes which could cloud, change color, or produce a color in response to urine, but these chemicals would also be activated by other compounds, producing embarrassing false-positives.
An immediate remedy when you suspect somebody has peed in the pool is to shock the water. Adding shock is putting a large dose of free chlorine into the pool water. This heavy chlorine load will cause a further chemical reaction, turning those chloramines into nitrates.
Your First Clue that Somebody Peed in the Hot Tub
When the chemical reaction of pee combined with chlorine occurs, you will notice a strong smell of chlorine.
And yes, about 20 gallons of pee sounds gross — especially if you picture it as 20 milk jugs lined up in a row. But in a 220,000-gallon pool, that's only 0.01 percent of the total liquid in the pool — in other words, a drop in the bucket.
Chlorine reacts with urine to form a host of potentially toxic compounds called disinfection byproducts. These can include anything from the chloramines that give well-used pools the aforementioned odor, to cyanogen chloride, which is classified as a chemical warfare agent.
Common Myth. There is a common myth circulating that if someone pees in the pool, it isn't a big deal because the chlorine will “get rid of it.” Wrong. Urine is sterile, so chlorine can't sanitize it.
Yes, it's usually possible to recover enough DNA from cells shed into the urine to carry out a DNA identitiy test of the kind used by Forensic Scientists to identify individuals. These tests generally include a sex determination test.
Blame your hot core temp again. Intense exercise or a session longer than 30 minutes will likely warm up your insides, urine included. It should chill in about an hour. This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of Women's Health, on newsstands now.
You might notice that in hot weather, you only produce small volumes of urine as the body is fighting to conserve water. If water is in excess, ADH levels are reduced limiting the amount of water resorbed back into the blood but increasing the volume eliminated in the urine.
Non-living organic waste (bather waste) is a huge contributor to cloudy pool water. This includes body waste, oils, saliva, dead skin, sweat and urine.
You may wonder why you faced this problem in the private or public swimming pool. It is exactly the same reason. The pool water although warmer, it's still colder than human's body temperature. So, if you have a weak pelvic floor and suffer from urinary incontinence, leaking after or during swimming is very likely.
Chloramine is the byproduct that's produced when the chlorine in the pool water combines with swimmer's waste (body oils, skin flakes, etc.) and other contaminants. It's this chemical compound that gives off the strong odour and can cause irritation to swimmer's eyes and skin.
Pool operators sometimes add an algae-killing chemical to the water, which shows up as a blue-tinted color, but that is not from chlorine. The blue tint is typically from algicide or copper sulfate, used to remove algae from the water. Chlorine in the water does not change the color or cause blue-tinted water.
Simply cleaning the surface every so often isn't enough. To that end, pools make use of sanitizing agents. The most common sanitizer used in public pools is chlorine. Chlorine is a pool oxidizer, meaning it breaches the cell walls of bacteria, viruses, algae, and other organisms and eliminates them from the inside out.
Dr. Newton says a pigment called urochrome, or urobilin, causes the yellow color in urine. Your kidneys filter out this byproduct from your bloodstream and it exits your body in urine. The more fluids you drink, the lighter the color of the pigment in your urine. The less you drink, the stronger the color.
The most well-known and easily recognizable symptom of a UTI is pain or discomfort when urinating. Oftentimes, this pain manifests itself as a tingling or burning sensation, and such pain indicates there is bacteria in the urethra.
Urine tests can be used to diagnose urinary tract infections, if bacteria or white blood cells are found. In patients who have already been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, urinalysis may be ordered at intervals as a quick and useful way to monitor function.
If you can't hand your urine sample in within 1 hour, you should put the container in a sealed plastic bag then store it in the fridge at around 4C. Do not keep it for longer than 24 hours. The bacteria in the urine sample can multiply if it is not kept in a fridge. If this happens, it could affect the test results.
Chlorine is added to the water to kill germs. But it does not work right away. If used properly, free chlorine* can kill most germs within a few minutes. CDC recommends pH 7.2–7.8 and a free chlorine concentration of at least 1 ppm in pools and at least 3 ppm in hot tubs/spas.
Pool maintenance is tedious, sometimes complicated work that can take 2 hours or more to complete, depending on your level of familiarity with the task. It takes an experienced professional with the right equipment and knowledge to know how to treat your pool.
Specialty chemicals.
Chlorine (or bromine) is not well suited for oxidation of organic body waste (like urine, body oils, sweat, sunscreen, etc).