how chlorine gas affects the human body and how it is used to treat water without being poisonous to people.
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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).
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