Thursday, January 3, 2008

No Detergent Please!!

Have you ever wondered why there are always signs posted about wearing proper swim attire when you go to the pool? They even go as far as mentioning that no underwear is allowed beneath your proper swim attire. What gives?

I always assumed that the underwear portion at least was because all undies may not be as clean as desired in a public pool. The rest of it just puzzled me. Until last week!

It’s not a cleanliness issue at all. It’s a pool maintenance issue. Apparently, when you wear regular clothes in a pool, the chemicals react badly with the particles of laundry detergent that are still attached to the fabric. When these chemicals get together, they form another compound that algae love to feed on. When you feed the algae, it naturally grows. Before you know it, algae will take over the pool. Who wants to swim in a pool of algae? Ick!

So don’t wash anything you swim in with laundry detergent. In fact, the detergent is too harsh for most swim wear anyway. I used to hand wash my suits with shampoo as soon as I took them off. Now I’ve gotten lazy and shampoo them in my washing machine then hang them to dry. It works quite well!

Happy swimming!!!

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