With the use of chlorine so prevalent and entrenched in the industry, any alternative would have to seriously prove itself as being much more beneficial to people’s health. It would also have to be economically viable and proven to be as effective in de-sanitising water as chlorine.

photo credit: Clask Magazin-e

Personally speaking, this author uses a filtering system for drinking water at home and can genuinely tell a marked difference between filtered and non-filtered tap water. The non-filtered water has a distinct chlorine smell to it whereas the filtered water is completely odourless, and hence more pleasant to drink. The question is, is it more beneficial to my health to drink the filtered water. I certainly prefer to drink the filtered water and on gut feeling, I ‘m sure that it’s much better for me and my family to drink filtered water.

With reference to the dangers of chlorine in swimming pools, I distinctly remember returning from swim club on a Thursday night with my eyes stinging for a couple of hours after a swim. Whatever it was they did, I can only presume that either the system wasn’t working properly at that time, they had got their chlorine levels wrong, or there was a dangerous imbalance in the pool’s ph levels at this time. Anyway, my eyes were fine the next morning and it didn’t bother me again. This example does raise the question however, what would this sort of exposure to someone who was say, a professional swimmer spending hours on end in the swimming pool?

The most credible alternative to chlorine is ozone. The current unpopularity of ozone use in swimming pools in the US is manly due to the unsuccessful early applications of the technique ten to fifteen years ago. American pools, having been geared to using the chlorine system of disinfecting, were not suited to the ozone system and therefore, the practice proved not only ineffective, but also very expensive. There is no doubt that ozone is a cleaner, safer and more environmentally friendly method, but engineers, architects and swimming pool owners will need to crack their heads together and develop a method for delivering this solution.