Is There a Chemical That Shows Who is Peeing in the Pool? [VIDEO]

There’s been a lot of talk recently about what actually causes those red eyes at the pool.

The CDC has reported that it is from the sweat and urine bonding with the chlorine, and not from simple contact with chlorine, like we may have thought before.

Mom always told us not to pee in the pool. Maybe none of us listened.

What about that chemical that is supposed to warn us, turning purple, blue or red when it comes into contact with urine?

Doesn’t it deter people who pee in pools?

It would if it weren’t a DIRTY LIE!

I searched all over the internet, and had one of our interns do the same. Try as we did, the only results we found for “pool urine detector”, “pool urine indicator” and a few other carefully thought out search terms were for signs or other novelty items.

Plus, we found this on AboutEducation, an answers website.

There is no chemical which changes color when someone urinates in a swimming pool. There are dyes which could cloud, change color, or produce a color in response to urine, but these chemicals would also be activated by other compounds, producing embarrassing false-positives.

So, if you are going to urinate in the pool, know that you are the one causing everyone to have red eyes, but there is no dye to let everyone know it is you doing it.

It probably isn’t just you, though. But, we’ll never know.

Sara Sommers, an intern at Townsquare Media, contributed to the creation of this post.