What to do Regarding Chemical

[Betty Jones]

Hey ,
Last time I asked about Chemical for Water purification .
But forget to mention I have chemically sensitive skin so can anyone suggest me good detergent which can good enough to purify Hot tub water?

[wmccall]

Hey ,
Last time I asked about Chemical for Water purification .
But forget to mention I have chemically sensitive skin so can anyone suggest me good detergent which can good enough to purify Hot tub water?

Way outside my expertise, but I use chlorine and add it just after I get out and I add just enough that there is practically none left in the water when I get in the next day.

[Kev B]

 Hi Betty,
Some people also are sensitive to hot water and jet blasting of their skin even without chemicals so maybe try to hydrate skin after getting out. There is a product called Baquaspa that you can try if chlorine and bromine are not working for you. But wmccal was correct when he mentioned that when you add the chlorine (use di-chlor, NOT calcium hypochlorite) AFTER exiting tub, by the next day it will mostly be gone. However, if there are a lot of different people using tub...I would not suggest that idea.

[Quickbeam]

My wife has some serious chemical sensitivities, so we are using hydrogen peroxide in our tub. So far it has been working out very well. If you were going to think about using this, you should know that it is not an approved sanitizer in either the U.S. or Canada, but apparently it is approved in Australia.

[johnnyk]

Baqua spa use a biguanide called PHMB as sanitizer. A similar biguanide called PHMG just got banned in the whole EU because it can be hazardous to your health. For example, it killed a bunch of people in South Korea. The EU is planning on banning PHMB as well, so if you ask me, I wouldn't use it in my tub...

[Betty Jones]

Way outside my expertise, but I use chlorine and add it just after I get out and I add just enough that there is practically none left in the water when I get in the next day.

Can you tells me please how much quantity should be used?

[Kev B]

Baqua spa use a biguanide called PHMB as sanitizer. A similar biguanide called PHMG just got banned in the whole EU because it can be hazardous to your health. For example, it killed a bunch of people in South Korea. The EU is planning on banning PHMB as well, so if you ask me, I wouldn't use it in my tub...

 Wow! please state your sources.

[Tman122]

Way outside my expertise, but I use chlorine and add it just after I get out and I add just enough that there is practically none left in the water when I get in the next day.

Can you tells me please how much quantity should be used?

You want to use enough dichlor to achieve a level of 3-5 PPM right after your soak. This will kill the nastys introduced and dissipate quickly and in 24 hours you will likely be soaking in .5 PPM or less chlorine. But the only way to know is to try it in YOUR tub. Start with 1tsp per person per 15 minutes of soaking. And adjust as needed to achieve 3-5 PPM after your soak.

No offense but everybody's different dirty.

[johnnyk]

Baqua spa use a biguanide called PHMB as sanitizer. A similar biguanide called PHMG just got banned in the whole EU because it can be hazardous to your health. For example, it killed a bunch of people in South Korea. The EU is planning on banning PHMB as well, so if you ask me, I wouldn't use it in my tub...

 Wow! please state your sources.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3274748/

[chem geek]

Very interesting.  There is also this follow-up study.  Probably not an issue for pools but could be an issue for spas where aeration jets are used that may volatize chemicals in the water.  Baquacil/biguanide/PHMB is not quite the same as PHMG, but it is very similar and it would be safer to assume similar effects until proven otherwise.

In general, inhalation of biocides is not good since you don't want to inflame or destroy lung tissue.  Ironically, chlorine is so reactive that it will tend to react with mucous in the airway before it gets deep into the lungs, but of course if you have very high concentrations then it can be damaging as described in this paper using 50 and 200 ppm chlorine gas for 15 minutes or this paper with 240 ppm for an hour.  This paper describes correlations of cumulative lifetime swimming time with asthma, hay fever, and allergic rhinitis.  As I described in this thread, meta-studies have not demonstrated the same correlations as found in Bernard's studies.  Also, the strongest correlations are with indoor pools that apparently did not use CYA so had higher active chlorine level where regulations were 0.5 to 1.5 ppm FC (with no CYA).  Allowed CC was high at 2 ppm until 2003 when it was regulated at < 0.8 ppm.

In spas using chlorine with CYA, the active chlorine level is lower and if one starts a soak with a lower level of chlorine (say 1-2 ppm) then the amount that is volatized is limited.  1 ppm FC with 40 ppm CYA is equivalent in active chlorine level to only 0.1 ppm FC with no CYA.