Courtesy of Marietta .edu

We wait for it, beg for it, plead for it and wish for it: summer in the Upper Midwest. It was a long hard winter, and summer is finally close at hand. Today is the last day of school for my kids. On the top of their to-do list is getting out and swimming. They love it, but I end up dreading and hating it. Why? It’s because of the horrible, toxic chlorine that they come home reeking of most of the time.

Another accident of chlorine exposure was just in our local news. It happened in a water park near The Wisconsin Dells. Again, people were sent to the hospital. Chlorine not only stinks up and dries out your skin, damages and dries out your hair, but can also make people sick. Chlorine bring on asthmatic reactions for people who are sensitive or prone to asthma. It can also bring on symptoms for people, like lifeguards, that are exposed for long periods of time.

You may wonder what else is there to use. More and more options are being developed each year. Some of the options are saline (salt water), ozone, ions, iodine, bromine, brine, and silver. There are a few more, but those are the biggies. Even those methods that are less toxic than chlorine, can cause health issues. Most still require some chlorine, although significantly less than without these methods.

The newest one I just heard about uses sphagnum moss to clean the water. Now, chlorine and algaecides still need to be used, but those chemicals can be reduced by up to 80 percent.  Creative Water Solution developed this idea, and started selling its products in 2007.  Creative Water Solutions is in Plymouth, Minnesota. It currently imports the moss from New Zealand, but plans to use local moss as the demand for its products increases.

Since the company began, it has gone on to test this system in large public pool situations, and has been very successful.  Chaos Waterpark recently switched to the system. Everyone, from workers to patrons, is happy with the results, according to a story I saw on local NBC affiliate WEAU. It is the first water park in the world to go to the moss system by Creative Water Solutions, according to WEAU’s story.

Hopefully, very soon, all pools will have clean water by using something besides large amounts of toxic chlorine. Greener technologies, like the Creative Water Solutions, benefit all of us and the planet.