I vaguely remember this being a plot point in an episode of 'The Adventures of Pete and Pete'†. I'm sure there are plenty of chemists that have valiantly attempted to find something that could both stay stable in UV-blasted chlorinated water and react with a weak acid to give an absorption in the visible wavelength. . .but that is a very long and hard-to-fulfill wishlist.
Anyway, it's just any sort of amine reacting with chlorine that produces the chloramines that irritate your eyes. Even if nobody urinated in the pool, the sweat people produce would still be able to cause it. Obviously it wouldn't deplete chlorine as quickly, but it isn't that irritation only comes from urine alone.
Further, I'm more worried by this:
> "We have a new parasitic germ that has emerged that's immune to chlorine," says Beach. "We've got to keep it out of the pool in the first place. We need additional barriers." - Dr. M Beach, Associate Director at Healthy Water, CDC
Pete & Pete continues to be one of those weirder shows that definitely messed me up from watching it as a kid. I seem to have some weird suppressed memory of a brain freeze episode as well. Weird stuff.
Pete & Pete is an absolutely fantastic and deeply strange show. Many lazy summer days of my childhood were spent trying to re-create some of the things I saw on it. It's an eternal favorite.
I always felt terrible for the chain smoking crossing guard that never abandoned his post. Until little pete took over and made mad cash out of it. But a young Buscemi and king of the road were my favorites.
I immediately though of that Pete and Pete episode too! I would imagine it would be difficult or impossible to find a chemical that would react with urine, but not sweat or other stuff coming off your body, that would be safe to swim in.
I saw a video on YouTube where a researcher described a way to estimate the volume of pee diluted in the pool water measuring the artificial sweetener present in a sample.
This will exclude people that don't drink zero calories soft drinks tho...
Maybe there's a machine learning solution. If we could have devices that could somehow probe the temperature of the water on an X,Y graph and detect when the ambient temperature around an individual has changed we can sound an alarm to detect possible urination or even a laser that can draw a circle around the targeted area.
Anyway, it's just any sort of amine reacting with chlorine that produces the chloramines that irritate your eyes. Even if nobody urinated in the pool, the sweat people produce would still be able to cause it. Obviously it wouldn't deplete chlorine as quickly, but it isn't that irritation only comes from urine alone.
Further, I'm more worried by this: > "We have a new parasitic germ that has emerged that's immune to chlorine," says Beach. "We've got to keep it out of the pool in the first place. We need additional barriers." - Dr. M Beach, Associate Director at Healthy Water, CDC
† See here: https://youtu.be/xQOePM_ewVM?list=PLBwI3kpp6F3Kk0_jpewLabhLT...