Science Is Coming In Hot To Ruin Pools And Chlorine Smell For You

I don't mean to brag, but the neighborhood I live in has a community pool, which means I get to use it.

I know, pretty cool, huh?

Why, just today, as we're in the dog days of summer, I was thinking to myself, "Man, I should wander down to the pool and take a dip."

But then I came across some new information about public pools and… well, I'm not in as much of a swimming mood anymore.

Lisa Cuchara, a professor of biomedical sciences at Quinnipiac University, wrote an article for The Conversation, in which she went ahead and ruined pools for a lot of us.

Cuchara says that while the chlorine that we dump into pools across the nation does kill some of the nasty things that our fellow swimmers bring into the pool, it doesn't kill everything.

She writes that some pathogens can hang around for days, including one delightful microscopic monster known as Cryptosporidium.

"This single-celled parasite has a tough outer shell that allows it to survive in chlorine-treated water for up to 10 days," Cuchara writes. "It spreads when fecal matter — often from someone with diarrhea — enters the water and is swallowed by another swimmer. Even a tiny amount, invisible to the eye, can infect dozens of people."

I, uh… I think I might just skip the pool and spray myself with the hose.

Hopefully your summer is going well, because you're about to learn that swimming pools are horrifically disgusting. (Getty Images)

Well, there was more, because that chlorine smell that makes you think of pool days in your youth? Yeah, it turns out that that's disgusting as hell too.

Cuchara says that a clean, properly chlorinated pool shouldn't have much of a smell. It's sweat, urine, oils, and skin cells reacting with the chemical and creating chloramines that produce that smell.

"These byproducts are responsible for that strong chlorine smell," she said. "A clean pool should actually lack a strong chlorine odor, as well as any other smells, of course."

Good lord… well, have a good rest of the summer, I guess.