Swimming pool chemistry and swimwear

The cocktail of sunscreen, salt water and chlorine water, UV rays, sand and salt crystals – no matter how it was mixed – is an extreme challenge for any swimwear. To enjoy your swimsuits for a long time, take a good shower after bathing with clear water, or rinse your clothes with it. Dying chlorine, sand and salt crystals can damage the Elastan and lead to faster fading of the colors. This can be avoided and also benefits your hair and skin.

Nor do sticking stains have to be. Do not keep the wet swimsuits in a plastic bag for too long. Dry your swimwear spread out or hung out, preferably in the shade. Dry swimsuits tolerate UV radiation well, but if they are wet, this can also contribute to bleaching or yellowing.

Even if you have used little or no sunscreen, the waterproof cream of the other guests can stick to the fabric and combine with plenty of chlorine. It is therefore worthwhile to wash out the swimwear with a lttle bit of detergent in the evening – even with dish soap if reasonable. This makes it easier to remove sweat and fat. All hyphen clothing tolerates a fine washing program at 30 – 40°C.

But don’t use a fabric softener.

Sunscreen not only often causes unsightly spots on the bathing suit, the cosmetic substances, especially unsaturated fatty acids can damage the fibers. But please do not give up on UV protection now. You should simply give the cream about 20 minutes to pull in before putting on your swimsuits.

Pilling, as with fabrics made of wool or cotton, does not exist with synthetic fibres. However, our jersey fabrics are worked (knitted) and have small loops that can hook up to edgy rocks or rough pool edges or wooden blanks and pull strings.

That’s why they rarely wear out, but it just doesn’t look so nice anymore. For children, therefore, the non-elastic woven board shorts are often the better choice.

The content of free chlorine indicates whether there is still sufficient disinfectant in the pool water. Its concentration in the pool water (except in a hot gushing pool) is set in Germany at 0.3-0.6 mg/l in the A4 of 19643.

In Switzerland, chlorine levels range from 0.2 to 0.8 mg/l (hot gush basin 0.7-1.5 mg/l) according to SIA 385/9 and in Austria, the ÖNORM M M 6215 gives values of at least 0.3 mg/l of free chlorine, with a maximum concentration of 1.2 mg/l for indoor pools and 2.0  mg/l for outdoor pools.

The German Health board demands:

Due to the development of harmful by-products during chlorination, minimization of the chlorine quantities used and requirements to ensure the quality of the bathing water through appropriate treatment technology instead of high chlorine. The prerequisite for this is that as many stress substances as possible, which can eat chlorine or be precursors for harmful by-products, are removed from the bath water before chlorination.

By the way, a strong chlorine smell is an indicator of a poor function of the swimming pool water treatment.

This part of ISO 105 gives three alternative testing conditions. The active chlorine concentrations of 50 mg/l and 100 mg/l concern the strains for swimwear. In addition, it establishes a test method for determining the resilience of the colors of textiles of all kinds against the exposure of active chlorine in such concentrations as “used for the disinfection of bath water in swimming pools (limit value Chlorination).”

It should be known that A4 standards are not per se law, but only describe the generally accepted technology standards. But this knowledge, which is more than 30 years old, is no longer in line with the current technology experience, at least as far as the limits of chlorination are concerned, as shown in the previous text. Today we know more about the dangers of chlorine chemistry in the swimming pool and have technical means to avoid them. One no longer consider 50mg or 100mg of free chlorine per litre to be “normal” and should avoid baths with such high chlorine concentration as far as possible.