It’s Cool to Pee in the Pool

By John Fleckenstein

Everyone knows the feeling of swimming through a warm spot in the pool. The age-old reaction is that you just swam through urine. However, the chances are slim to none that the pocket of water even has any trace of urine in it whatsoever. The concept of urinating in the pool is a controversial issue that is argued among both swimmers and non-swimmers, about whether or not it sanitary to do so. In the world of competitive swimmers, opinions are split between whether or not it is socially acceptable to urinate in a pool. What the average pool patron doesn’t realize is that it not unsanitary to pee in the pool; given many mathematical and medical properties, urine in a pool can do no harm to the facility or it’s swimmers.

A fact that is often over looked is that urine is not an unsanitary fluid. The content of urine consists of nothing that can harm the human body. Urine, the body’s main export of salt excretion consists of mainly water and dissolved excess potassium, calcium, and sodium.

In an average pool facility, the dimensions of the pool are seventy-five feet by twenty-four feet, and a depth ranging anywhere from three to fifteen feet. Such is the pool in Elting Gym at SUNY New Paltz. The Elting Gym pool, run by Aquatics Director and Head Coach of the Varsity swim team at the college Dan Talleyrand, holds approximately 115,000 gallons of water. In order to maintain sanitary swimming conditions, the pool is equipped with an elaborate filtering system. The Elting Pool has two filters, which can filter all 115,000 gallons of water in as little six hours. Each filter is also cleaned at least once every one to three weeks to ensure it’s proper function.

Although the filter system helps dirt and other filth from floating around in the water, it is still chlorinated to keep the water sterile. Chlorine is an oxidizing element used in water purification, disinfectants, and bleach. Oxidation is the process in which the chlorine molecule reacts to bacteria and life-threatening germs by shutting down their cell structures and enzymes. The chlorine level of the pool is monitored periodically regulated throughout the day, as too much of the chemical is harmful to skin and too little leads to a dirty pool. The legal level of chlorine in a public pool is anywhere between .6 and 5.0 parts per million, or ppm; the perfect balance of safety and cleanliness.

Even in stagnant, fresh water, peeing in the pool is not as unsanitary as bathers may come to believe. There is in fact no bacterium or anything harmful in urine. Urine content is almost identical to perspiration content (which explains the phenomena that urine is the same color as a sweat stain in a white t-shirt,) and, contrary to popular belief, a swimmer sweats as much during a workout as any other athlete would in a workout outside the pool. Urine happens to be so safe that the ancient Aztecs used to pour it on wounds to prevent infection. The South American civilization also consumed urine to relieve stomach pains.

If, however, urine was as dirty and unsafe and it is made out to be, and someone peed in a six-lane pool that had no filters and no means of sanitization, it would still be virtually undetectable. The average person can hold anywhere from 350-500 ml of fluid in their bladder, and the average bladder gives the first impulse to urinate when the bladder reaches 200 ml. In a scenario created for arguments sake, an average swim team is about twenty people, and the average person urinates approximately 325 ml. If every person on a swim team all urinated at the same time, there would be about two gallons of urine in the pool. Despite the deceiving conception of how much that urine that is, two gallons is not even a measurable percentage of 115,000. In order for the content of water in the pool to be 1% urine, all twenty swimmers would need to pee 57.5 gallons each. Or, if that ratio seems infeasible, if 575 people all urinated two gallons each, it would equal 1% of the pool’s water. Unless a small army turns a swimming pool into a bathroom, urine disappears almost instantaneously into the filtered, chemical filled water. Or, 13,365 people peeing 325 ml would equal 1% of 115,000.

While many people are aware of the percentages and ratios of urine to water, their counter argument is much less scientific and more of a moral issue. Once being a swimmer who gets out of the pool to relieve myself, I can come up with a defense, although much weaker, to my argument. Along with many others, I used to not be able to pee in the pool because it abnormal to just pee on yourself. It is a respectable argument, as I have had personal encounters with people who cannot physically bring themselves to urinate in the water.

Due to the hard facts and unchanging numbers, it is hard to argue that it is unsanitary to pee in a pool. For a long time, urinating has been wrongly accused of false convictions. It is however hard to disagree with someone’s moral issues after they agree that it wouldn’t be sanitary. In a structure with the capacity to hold 115,000 gallons of chlorinated water, it is hard to infect it with anything, let alone something that is not harmful to begin with. In conclusion, I find it hard not to condone peeing in the pool, not only because of the above reasons, but also for the waste of energy it is to climb out of the pool and walk all the way to the bathroom.