how chlorine gas affects the human body and how it is used to treat water without being poisonous to people.
In: 14
Dosage is everything, there are very few chemicals that only a tiny amount is fatal. Dilute chlorine bleach at levels found in tap water is fine. Much higher levels can be dosed into swimming pools without ill effects too.
At higher concentrations it’s an oxidizing agent that can destroy many molecules, including those necessary for living processes.
Chlorine in pools is at such a low level that it kills bacteria, but isnt harmful for humans. Many pools when theyve just added chlorine wont allow swimmers in precisely because at that moment it can be harmful and they wait for the water to mix it around properly. If they get this mix wrong (which has happened) it is in fact harmful to humans. Like many things its about getting the balance right.
Chlorine gas isnt used to treat water, its a solid that they mix with the water in pools. Chlorine Gas is harmful to humans because its incredibly reactive. When it touches water it creates an acid. So when it touches your eyes, nose, mouth, throat and lungs its creating an acid (Hypochlorous Acid and Hydrochloric Acid) which then burns away at those areas.
Chlorine gas is nasty as hell to humans because it will combine with the water in our eyes, lungs and throat to create concentrated hypochlorous acid and hypochlorine ions. Which is bad, for the same reason that it’s generally not good to get concentrated acid in your face and lungs.
However, the chlorine added to drinking water is supposed to be balanced against how much nasty stuff there is in the water that could be bad for you. By the time you’re drinking it it has safely reacted with all of the bad stuff in the water and done stuff to them instead of you. Chlorine itself isn’t so bad for you as long as it’s already bonded to something else, like sodium (forming NaCl, table salt) and it’s a pretty low concentration anyway. If there is a small amount of chlorine left as it reaches you… Well, you as a large biological being has all sorts of defenses that a single cell bacteria doesn’t. For example all your innards (like your mouth, throat, stomach, intestines etc) are all covered by protective layers of slime (like your spit) and beneath that you have layers of cells that are meant to live fast and die young (the inner lining of your stomach consists of cells that only live for a couple of days, so they’re meant to handle all sort of abuse in their short lifetime).
Chlorine works by way of a chemical reaction called oxidation, where electrons are taken from a compound by the oxidizer. Changing the electron configuration of an atom or compound changes is chemical properties. On a microscopic level, this is really bad. The parts of microbes that function to keep them alive are going to have a hard time doing what they do when their chemical properties have been changed. This happens to some of your cells too when you’re exposed to chlorine but in the case of chlorinated water, it’s a very small amount relative to all the cells in your body and the chlorine is only going to interact with a very small (relative) number of your cells, which are all constantly being replaced anyway since we’re taking about a compound that only touches your skin or digestive tract.
Chlorine is also volatile, meaning it doesn’t like to stick around long. Even if the water you drink is pretty heavily chlorinated, the chlorine is gone from the water pretty quickly. If you want to try an experiment and you have a pool or chlorinated tap water, take a cup of the stuff and smell it or taste it to confirm the chlorine level. Leave the cup out in a warm room to sort of stimulate body temperature. After a couple hours, smell or taste it again. You’ll find the chlorine level has significantly reduced. Part of the reason water is chlorinated more heavily than it needs to be to be effective is that it is so volatile that it loses enough to be ineffective pretty quickly.
Latest Answers