Are you developing a love-hate relationship with your swimming pool?
Do you keep telling yourself that you should use your pool or spa more often for all you spent on it - but don't?
Feel tired and worn rather than refreshed after being in your pool, spa or hot tub?
Are you tired of the smell of chemicals?
The two most common pool and spa chemicals are chlorine and bromine.
These are two exorbitantly deadly toxins.
Known Chlorine Dangers:
* Chlorine combines with natural organic matter decaying vegetation to form potent cancer causing trihalomethanes (THM’s)
* Collectively include such carcinogens as chloroforms, bromoforms carbon tectachloride, bischlorothane and other cancer causing agents
* The level of chlorine in swimming pools is over 1,000% the level deemed minimally safe by the EPA in water
* Causes atherosclerosis, stroke and heart attack
* Causes skin to prematurely age
* Damages the human eye
* Causes bladder, breast, testicular, bladder, colon, or rectal and bowel cancer as well as malignant melanoma
* Damages lung tissue
* Causes acne, psoriasis, seborrhea and eczema
* Converts to dioxins - the most dangers of cancer causing chemicals and which build up permanently within a person's body
causes infertility and birth defects
* Damages the nervous system permanently
"Chlorine is so dangerous" according to PhD biologist/chemist Dr. Herbert Schwartz," that it should be banned. Putting chlorine in water is like starting a time bomb. Cancer, heart trouble, premature senility, both mental and physical are conditions attributable to chlorine treated water supplies. It is making us grow old before our time by producing symptoms of aging such as hardening of the arteries."
Dr. Stephen Askin wrote: "The real issue is not just how toxic chlorine itself is but how the unintended by-products of chlorine (organochlorines and dioxins) remain in the environment. They are persistent in the environment; they do not break down readily and therefore bio-accumulate. This can create a very serious health problem; the dioxins and other toxic chemicals accumulate in the fatty tissues. These contaminants are also hormone disruptors because they mimic estrogen. The EPA has observed and documented hormonal imbalance, suppressed immune systems, reproductive infertility and alterations in fetal development of animals. In viewing the big picture, these factors are perhaps the most frightening results from the widespread use of chlorine."
In Super Nutrition for Healthy Hearts Dr Richard Passwater explains how "the origin of heart disease is akin to the origin of cancer" Chlorination could very well be a key factor linking these two major diseases. Chlorine creates THM's and haloforms. These potent chemical pollutants can trigger the production of excess free radicals in our bodies. Free radicals cause cell damage. Excess free radicals can cause normal smooth muscle cells in the arterial wall to go haywire, to mutate. The fibrous plaque consequently formed is essentially a benign tumor. Unfortunately, this tumor is linked with the origin of heart disease."
Is Bromine a safe alternative?
Known Bromine Dangers:
* If spilled on skin it produces painful sores
* Has strong unpleasant odor
* Is Toxic
* Converts to dichlorobromomethane, bromoform and bromate
* The Metropolitan Emergency Response Network defines dichlorobromomethan as particularly dangerous and harmful (see below)
Vapor will attack the eyes and lungs
* Causes cancer
* Damages skin
* Damages the liver
* Causes depression and brain damage
* Damages the nervous system and muscles
* Bromine vapors are known to reduce male sperm count, causes malformed sperm resulting in birth defects and causes male infertility
* Maximum safety precautions should be used when handling it
The Metropolitan Emergency Response Network advises: "Dichlorobromomethane should be handled as a CARCINOGEN--WITH EXTREME CAUTION. * Exposure can irritate the eyes, nose and throat. Higher levels can irritate the lungs and may cause you to become dizzy, light-headed and to pass out. Could cause death. * Repeated exposures affects the liver. * Contact can irritate the skin."
EVEN WORSE, some pool and spa suppliers urge using both chlorine and bromine together - which doubles their sales.Combining chlorine and bromine is the second most powerful cancer-causing liquid mixture only surpassed by drinking highly radioactive liquids.
When combined, chlorine and bromine make 97 carcinogens, 82 mutagens, 28 acute and chronic toxic contaminants and 23 tumor promoters. Many of these complex chemicals resulting from the conversion of chlorine and bromine to other chemicals permanently accumulate in a person's body fat. Each time exposed, the level of carcinogens, mutagens, toxins and tumor promoters increases. With each increase, the risk of cancer increases to a point of it no longer is a question of if the person will develop cancer. It is only a question of how soon. Each exposure from that point means sooner than before.
To dive into a swimming pool and claim "see, I'm ok" is no different from a person holding up radioactive material making the same claim. Both expose the body to dangerous carcinogens and detrimental elements that can permanently damage a person's cells - primarily in body fat. The more the exposure, the higher the concentration becomes.
Who makes such a claim? Essentially every chemist and doctors in the field of environmental toxins, the EPA, medical researchers, and essentially all health professionals and experts in the fields of cancer and toxins, except those employed by the chemical manufacturers of chlorine and bromine.Chlorine also is the number one cause of household poisoning and is particularly dangerous to children.
Those who sell chlorine claim it is a safe household pool chemical and declare that hydrogen peroxide is a danger if carried in a car that is in a massive auto accident, are side-stepping a fact. Beyond the extreme health dangers and damaged caused by chlorine used in water, it is also the single most dangerous of all chemicals to have at home. For instance, in 1997, 217,989 calls were made to the Poison Control Center and of those 62,023 were about chlorine. This means that 28.4 percent of all calls were related to poisonings by chlorine products. What's even more important, is that most of those calls were about children under 6 years of age.
The difference in the dangers of chlorine and bromine compared to hydrogen peroxide is clear. Chlorine and bromine are two of the most deadly poisons in existence, both of which have immediate killing power and long term killing consequences on the DNA and cellular systems. These toxins kill everything, including people. Hydrogen peroxide on the other hand kills micro-organisms by over oxidizing them with too much oxygen. Hydrogen peroxide is water and oxygen, two of the most essential and beneficial elements to the human body. The star contrast between the deadly elements Chlorine and Bromine and the benefits you can derive from Hydrogen Peroxide is astounding..
Why people switch to h2o2 for their pools and spas:
One reason is to answer a simple question: Why don't you use your pool or spa more frequently?
While some switch for reasons of personal health (pool chemicals are very harmful), most have a more basic reason. They want to enjoy using their pool or spa.
The main reason people with pools and spas quickly come to rarely actually use - or even sit by - their pool or spa is an instinctive health repulsion your body recognizes, even though you do not consciously recognize the danger. The water and area smells like chemicals. The water stings your eyes and turns them red. Skin turns white to deep layers and for sometimes can just peel off depending on the extent of exposure.
People familiar with h2o2 treatment of pools and spas will not use toxic pool chemicals. As you might expect, there are people who do not want to relax or swim in toxic chemicals or breathe toxic fumes. Rather, they want to relax is pure, clean water that isn't detrimental to their health.
It also is increasingly understood that the "relatively safe" (as often called) pool chemicals interact with other chemicals and organic compounds that enter a pool or spa, resulting in chemical composition of the pool chemicals to change to even more dangerous and harmful chemicals. The list is long and varies depending on the pool chemicals used. Included are chemicals known to be carcinogens and damage the lungs, liver and brain. Some are very complex molecular structures. Others are simple and obvious.
When any organic life form is destroyed,ammonia is formed. Most pool chemicals contain chlorine or bleach (or derivatives). Bleach and ammonia combine to form chlorine gas, which is what was used in death penalty gas chambers and in WWI chemical weapons.
The chemicals also continue to build up with each treatment by pool chemicals, because the working chemicals have converted to other non working and more dangerous forms. Quickly, the pool becomes a toxic concentration of chemicals, rather than the pure water swimming pool. The combinations and complexities of the toxic chemicals would kill a person within seconds destroying their body as if in a vat of acid were it not for the high level of dilution as a result of the water in your pool. Instead, it only burns your eyes, wrinkles your skin, and possibly kills you slowly across time.
This is why most people often plan to use their pool or spa, but do not. They come to start telling themselves that they should use their pool and spa more often out of some sense of duty to use the thing they paid so much money for and some sense of guilt - almost like a person saying "I should go to church more often". Of course, pools and spas are not about duty, they are suppose to be about pleasure and cleanliness. This also is why most people reject offers to come over and swim in their pool.
The subconscious mind is very survival oriented. Just like it will know that gasoline fumes are harmful and drinking gasoline would be harmful, it also is putting up powerful resistance to using the pool of chemicals or even being around the fumes of it.
Some people switch to h2o2 for their pool or spa because they are health conscious. However, most switch because their pool or spa is more enjoyable to use and be around after switching from Chlorine treatments.
Smell Factor:
To understand the "smell" benefits of hydrogen peroxide over dirty water with organic waste in it or the smell of chemicals in a treated pool or spa is to understand what hydrogen peroxide is and what it does in nature.
Hydrogen peroxide is the molecule h2o2. This means it has water (h2o) and an extra oxygen molecule that is attached. It is a liquid. However, it also is only semi-stable. Contact with organic substances of any kind, with a short list of minerals or U.V. light (such as sunlight) causes it to decompose. This means it releases the extra oxygen molecule in gaseous form of 100% pure oxygen and what remains is 100% pure water.
Pure oxygen is extremely deadly for micro-organisms. Essentially, it burns them. If you have ever been on oxygen while in a hospital, you may remember that if the oxygen level was turned up too high, your nose would start to burn. While oxygen is extremely beneficial, if the level is too high it causes organic substances to burn (actually they "rust", but I will avoid the chemistry in detail.) Hydrogen peroxide also is a charged molecule, very movement active.
On the molecular level, h2o2 will kill simple organisms. It does so by decomposing to pure water and pure oxygen when it comes into contact with a micro-organism. In a pool or spa, it acts similar to the human immune system, in which immunity system cells attack foreign objections, but do not harm the larger life form (you.) This is how h2o2 works; it uses pure oxygen against micro-organisms.
Pool chemicals in bath water for health?
Many people add hydrogen peroxide to their bath and foot bath water for health reasons. H2O2 oxygenates the skin and helps to cleansing it (skin is porous and builds upon waste excretion). Hydrogen Peroxide also kills fungus and other micro-organisms that live on and just below skin surface. There is no harmful side effects possible because h2o2 is non-toxic.
No one pours typical chlorine and bromine pool chemicals into their bath water believing it is healthy.
HOW HYDROGEN PEROXIDE WORKS AGAINST ORGANIC SUBSTANCES
Hydrogen peroxide has been called a "kamikaze" or a "depth charge" chemical against organic substances. H2o2 is simply water (h2o) with an extra oxygen molecule loosely attached (h2o2). When h2o2 contacts any organic molecule, the contact knocks off the extra oxygen molecule.
The result is two fold. First, energy is released. Though certainly not noticeable at the atomic/molecular level, the power in "decomposing" h2o2 is so great that hydrogen peroxide has been used to power rockets into space, powered the X-15 first subsonic jet and the U.S.S.R. supersonic attack torpedoes. When the atom breaks free, the potential energy within the molecule is released, resulting in a flash of steam heat. The first "killing" ability of the h2o2 is to blow up the organic molecule.
The free oxygen atom then impacts the organic molecule, resulting in the molecule oxidizing. Organic substances in contact with pure oxygen "burn" (or more precisely oxidize. The combined result is that the organic molecule is blown up and burned).
What remains, then, of the hydrogen peroxide atom? It is now only pure water (h2o2) and pure oxygen (o). It destroys the organic substance and then converts itself to pure water and pure oxygen in the process. There are no toxins in hydrogen peroxide and it is the pure bio-degrading chemical that can not build up in your pool or spa. It not only destroys organic contamination, but also destroys itself in the process to the two purest and most beneficial chemicals: pure water and pure oxygen. There are no other elements in hydrogen peroxide.
Toxin Free:
A Hydrogen Peroxide pool treatment is not only non-toxic and safe, it actually is good for your skin because of its oxygenating properties (rather than bleaching and poisoning it).
As the parts of h2o2 are only pure water and pure oxygen, it will naturally decompose in its usage cycle for a 100% decomposition into pure and safe parts of water and oxygen only. Thus, there is no chemical build up nor conversion to other chemical compounds.
Pool and Spa usage is most popular with our customers and the most rapidly growing area of sales.
Spa Usage and Costs:
I can not imagine anyone with a spa using any toxic or dangerous chemicals in their spa. The cost difference makes hydrogen peroxide highly attractive if all actual costs are calculated. If you add the innumerable support chemicals, testing, and frequency of draining the pool, the comparison makes h2o2 the obvious choice. If you try h2o2 in your spa, you will fall in love with your spa again and never go back to chlorine, bromine or "secret ingredient" pool chemicals which few can pronounce let alone attest t the safety of. The h2o2 will eliminate the bad smells that come from untreated spa water, without the chemical smell of other spa treatments.
Pond Maintenance:
Hydrogen peroxide also can be used in ponds with plants to reduce algae and micro-organism growth.The finest commercial aquariums now use h2o2 to treat their tanks, which contain sea life inventories valued into the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Draining and cleaning tanks is extremely costly, dangerous to sea life that has to be removed and particularly harmful to plant life that can not be removed. However, they can not use the toxic chemicals used for water treatment.
What they found is that h2o2 "attacks" the lowest life forms first - meaning the micro organisms such as fungus and bacteria that harms their sea life. Next, the h2o2 will attack algae and lowest plant life forms.
They cease h2o2 treatment at that level to avoid harming the higher plant, fish and other aquatic life. The h2o2 that remains in the water will quickly decompose to merely pure water and gaseous oxygen by its interaction with the organic matter in the tank and U.V. from the display lights or sunlight if outdoors.
We DO NOT recommend amateur usage of h2o2 in ponds or aquariums with fish. This requires fairly exact testing of concentration levels and supervision that is best left to the professionals in marine life. However, h2o2 treatment is an outstanding way to minimize algae, fungus and other infestations growth turning a beautiful pond into a smelly, cloudy mini swamp.
Safety Issues of 35% hydrogen peroxide:
Hydrogen peroxide for water treatment has been extremely popular and preferred across Europe for decades and in greater numbers in the U.S.A. each month. It not only poised economic challenge to the suppliers of pool chemicals (that require more pool chemicals, refreshing pool chemicals, and then pump-it-all-out and start again with chemicals - but also the manufacturers of complex pool systems for usage of such chemicals.
There is little legitimate criticism to make of hydrogen peroxide, because in diluted form it is good for your health. Yet the chlorine and bromine merchants must find reason. As a result, we have read some very alarmist warnings of the dangers of hydrogen peroxide. The most common is to read "Imagine the terrible thing that could happen in a serious auto accident in which the hydrogen peroxide bottle is broken!" That is a curious one, given that vehicle also contains many gallons of explosive gasoline and an impact would have to be massive to bust a plastic bottle being driven home. The solution is to transport hydrogen peroxide (and all other chemicals) in the trunk or back of your truck.
There is a danger factor to 35% hydrogen peroxide concerning handling that applies to all chemicals in general. It is highly concentrated and if undiluted will sting a person's skin. If you spill 35% hydrogen peroxide on you, in a few seconds your skin will start to sting and to turn white where contact was made. The "treatment" is to quickly wash the area off with water or any safe liquid (soda pop or any other non harmful water based liquid.) Your skin will continue to sting for a few minutes and will turn light yellow or white where there was contact. Within half an hour to an hour, skin color will return to normal. There will be no scarring and no toxins entered the body as h2o2 has no toxins.
Like all liquid chemicals, concentrated hydrogen peroxide can damage eyes. Unlike other chemicals that are not water based, flushing the eyes with water not only is the treatment, but water also dilutes hydrogen peroxide to a safe concentration level. If highly diluted, h2o2 is safe to drink and millions of people world wide use hydrogen peroxide as an internal health supplement (it must be VERY diluted) - something not true for nearly all other chemicals.
35% hydrogen peroxide will not burn or explode. If spilled on the ground where plants grow, spray it with water to reduce the concentration and it will benefit the plants and grass. Gardens and farmers use hydrogen peroxide for house plants, gardens and commercial farming to oxygenate the soil and kill harmful micro-organisms.
The only safety issue of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide is to avoid splashing it on yourself or in your eyes, and to store it away from children or incompetent adults. Carry it in your trunk if moving it.
SAFETY COMPARISON:
Once the hydrogen peroxide is diluted in your pool or spa, there are exactly ZERO safety issues. When diluted, all danger vanishes. H2o2 contains no poisons or toxins or any harmful substance. It is water and oxygen. It does not cause cancer. It does not harm or age skin (it refreshes skin). It does not harm the liver, brain, nervous system or brain. Hydrogen peroxide in your pool or spa as the water treatment will not and can not harm you.
Once in the pool or spa, it is 100% safe, completely non harmful and only beneficial to your health.The safety issues for typical pool chemicals begin when added to your pool or spa. You just put poisons in your water. They will interact with other chemicals and organic substances to make more toxins. And each time you add pool chemicals, the concentration of toxins in both the water and surrounding air equally increases. Those toxins and poisons harm you. They can slowly kill you. The air around your pool or spa, and therefore around your home, also contains these toxins and poisons that you breathe every day and every night. Day after month after year.
KEEP YOUR POOL OR SPA - GET RID OF THE CHEMICALS:
For the majority of people, the health damage is very gradual. However, some people have strong allergic reactions to some of the chemicals in pool and spa chemicals - or the chemicals made by those chemicals. Although no conscious of why, some people will come to so deeply dislike their spa they will leave them permanently drained or even throw them away. Others will fill in their pool or sell their house to buy one without a pool.
While concentrated hydrogen peroxide should be stored and handled with common sense, the true safety distinction is that h2o2 becomes only beneficial once added to a pool or spa. Most pool and spa chemicals make their dangerous aspects when they are put into your water.
HYDROGEN PEROXIDE IS NOT A RARE, COUNTER-CULTURE ENVIRONMENTALIST NICHE MARKET FOR WATER PURIFICATION
Chlorine and Bromine are sold as pool, spa and hot tub chemicals to people who know little to nothing about water purification. Hydrogen peroxide is used by the true professionals. Here are just a few examples of our own experience:
The Fort Worth, Texas Water Gardens covers many acres. It is sunken, heavily covered with old trees, and has hundreds of yards of flowing water, hundreds of feet of water curtains, ponds and fountains. They do not use chlorine or bromine. They use hydrogen peroxide. Because the area is sunken there is little wind. The fumes of chlorine or bromine would be unbearable. Those chemicals would kill the trees. It would stain the stone and brick work. Instead, with hydrogen peroxide, there is no smell at all. It will not harm the vegetation or bleach out the stone and bricks. It is such a perfect system the only clue the water is treated at all is a hydrogen peroxide sticker on the door to the small pump room.
When a large local urban water supply (drinking water) reached levels of toxins and cancer-causing agents, the pending crisis called in the experts. To try to determine the cause, they had to test incoming water without chlorine or bromine to eliminate all the poisons and cancer causing chemicals they create when they interact with organic material. To do so, they used hydrogen peroxide (from us) to kill the organics - thus leaving only the chemicals from the water - not from the chlorine and bromine. To no surprise, it was learned that it was the chlorine interacting with higher than average organic material that was causing the poisoning of the water.
This is not rare. In our own small community, there have been two notices in the last year that the water was dangerously high in cancer causing chemicals - and that the cause was the chemicals used in the water treatment. To address this, they had to dramatically cut back on chemical treatment and instructed people to boil the water before consuming to kill organic contamination. Note what most mattered in safety. Nothing could remove the toxic chemicals - there were the real danger. Boiling would eliminate the lesser danger of micro-organisms.
The largest chain of commercial aquariums in the U.S.A. use G.O.E. 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide to treat the water in their huge aquariums - without removing the sea life and fish. While this requires expertise, treating an aquarium with the sea life still in it with chlorine or bromine would result in killing everything in the aquarium.
Chlorine and bromine are sold to home pool, spa and hot tub owners on the P.T. Barnum principle: 'There is a sucker born every minute". They even convince customers that somehow doing so enters the person into an exact science of water treatment - with endlessly testing the water's PH factors, adding chemicals, offset chemicals, balancing chemicals, anti-foaming chemicals... It is a sucker's play to do so. More than eliminating organic growth in your pool, you want to avoid poisonous and toxic chemicals in the water. That seems obvious. I have no concerns swimming in a river or lake in terms of organic life in it. My only concern would be if it has dangerous chemicals. Given the choice between swimming in a river or swimming in a chemical waste water dump?
Putting poisons and toxic chemicals in your pool, spa or hot tub is not what a rational person knowingly does.
SAFE FOR YOUR POOL OR SPA FILTER AND PUMP?
Some pool and spa chemical suppliers and Internet retailers warn that hydrogen peroxide will damage the pump and/or filtration system. Is this true?
The answer is no, maybe, and no.
Hydrogen peroxide in a concentrated form can damage natural rubber and certain metal (silver). Nearly all pools and spas use plastic, steel, synthetic "rubber", fiberglass and stainless steel. Those would not be harmed by any concentration of hydrogen peroxide.
The answer is "maybe" if natural rubber is used AND if you have the mindset of the chemical merchants. Their view of water treatment is that you pour powerful chemicals into your pool to remain permanently in the water. As those turn to other chemicals, you then should add more chemical. Finally, when the chemical soup is so out-of-wack and awful, you should pump it all out and start with a new chemical soup and repeat the process.
There is no rationality if following that apparent love of chemicals in usage of hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide will kill the organics - and convert itself to pure water and pure oxygen in doing so. What hydrogen peroxide remains will also convert to water and oxygen over the next few days by reaction to the U.V. in sunlight. No only does h2o2 purge your pool of organic contamination, it also then purges your pool of itself. There is no increasingly chemical build up with h2o2.
Most who use h2o2 for their pool add it at night, turn off the pump and forget about it. Across the night the atoms of h2o2 will destroy micro-organisms. The next day, the sun will reduce the h2o2 concentration further. The pool owner can turn on the pump anytime.
Most bleaches, chlorine and pool chemicals also harm rubber - and unlike h2o2 they also build up chemical film and clogging build up. So IF you have natural rubber fittings and IF you pour in lots of h2o2 over and over like other pool chemicals, it could damage your seals, fittings and pump like other pool chemicals ultimately do.
So then the final "no", not if you use h2o2 as h2o2, rather than like other pool and spa chemicals - meaning always building up the level of chemicals in your water.
TERRIBLY FOULED POOLS AND SPAS:
Some pools and spas are neglected for months and even years, resulting in terrible levels of growth fouling. As the pool or spa dries out time to time, this also forms a thick crust, like a contaminated ship bottom. A high concentration of hydrogen peroxide will kill the growth and even will remove surface layers of it, but will not remove dense dead growth on the pool surfaces. This would allow renewed usage of the pool without further growth from the fouled surfaces, but there would still be the unsightly appearance.
There are rare instances where this is desirable, however, in the instance of decorative ponds or "pond pools" in which the pool is stone lined or otherwise made to look like a natural pond in a natural setting. Having a natural appearing pond or pool, but also with clear and clean water, is a challenge not met by pool chemicals.
PONDS, POND POOLS (swimming holes) AND LIVING POOLS
For the natural appearance effect, the pond or natural appearance pool is deliberately allowed to foul. Then the "green growth" is hydrogen peroxide killed to prevent further growth. From that point, the water is h2o2 treated. This allows crystal clear and clean water, but without the antiseptic swimming pool appearance.
It is possible to have a safe swimming pond or pool with plant growth using h2o2. However, this does take paying attention to some detail to avoid too high and too low levels. This will be unique to each pond. H2o2 will destroy small organisms first and then the higher (or larger) life forms. Thus, in a living pond or pool the level of h2o2 usage is sporadic. A high concentration level of h2o2 is used (usually for half a day) and then the level reduced to very low to sustain maintenance, but not damage the plants. Very small trace amounts of h2o2 are beneficial to nearly all plants.
POOL SIDE PLANT LIFE
Some people struggle to keep plant life around a pool where water is splashed or spilled on the plants or grass areas. Pool chemicals kill plants. While concentrated hydrogen peroxide also would be harmful to plants, the level of dilution of pool water is beneficial to plants. Gardeners and farmers use hydrogen peroxide for soil treatment and even plant watering water. The benefit is so great that if you do drain an hydrogen peroxide treated pool or spa, you can do so onto grass and for plant and tree watering.
There is no pool chemical that can honestly say it would help your plants and yard if you poured pool water on it. This is true with a hydrogen peroxide treated pool.
HOW TO USE HYDROGEN PEROXIDE IN YOUR POOL OR SPA?
For a spa, we do recommend you drain it to get rid of all chemicals. However, h2o2 will not adversely interact with current pool chemicals and some will transition to h2o2 usage. If your pool is highly organically fouled, you may want to use a much higher initial level of h2o2 to kill the organics, drain this, and then go to the same maintenance levels as for a pool.
For a pool, it is not necessary to drain the pool if you do not want to until when you would regularly drain the pool while using pool chemicals. Or you may want to transition to h2o2 at that time. Hydrogen peroxide will not have any adverse reaction or interaction with pool chemicals. The level of h2o2 suggested below will vary by the amount of organic material that comes into the water (leaves, dust) and by pool usage that then also brings contaminating organics into the water. Within the context of the water volume in a swimming pool, increasing concentration to address high pool usage or high organic content can not reach a harmful level no matter how high a concentration you decide to use.
Do you keep telling yourself that you should use your pool or spa more often for all you spent on it - but don't?
Feel tired and worn rather than refreshed after being in your pool, spa or hot tub?
Are you tired of the smell of chemicals?
The two most common pool and spa chemicals are chlorine and bromine.
These are two exorbitantly deadly toxins.
Known Chlorine Dangers:
* Chlorine combines with natural organic matter decaying vegetation to form potent cancer causing trihalomethanes (THM’s)
* Collectively include such carcinogens as chloroforms, bromoforms carbon tectachloride, bischlorothane and other cancer causing agents
* The level of chlorine in swimming pools is over 1,000% the level deemed minimally safe by the EPA in water
* Causes atherosclerosis, stroke and heart attack
* Causes skin to prematurely age
* Damages the human eye
* Causes bladder, breast, testicular, bladder, colon, or rectal and bowel cancer as well as malignant melanoma
* Damages lung tissue
* Causes acne, psoriasis, seborrhea and eczema
* Converts to dioxins - the most dangers of cancer causing chemicals and which build up permanently within a person's body
causes infertility and birth defects
* Damages the nervous system permanently
"Chlorine is so dangerous" according to PhD biologist/chemist Dr. Herbert Schwartz," that it should be banned. Putting chlorine in water is like starting a time bomb. Cancer, heart trouble, premature senility, both mental and physical are conditions attributable to chlorine treated water supplies. It is making us grow old before our time by producing symptoms of aging such as hardening of the arteries."
Dr. Stephen Askin wrote: "The real issue is not just how toxic chlorine itself is but how the unintended by-products of chlorine (organochlorines and dioxins) remain in the environment. They are persistent in the environment; they do not break down readily and therefore bio-accumulate. This can create a very serious health problem; the dioxins and other toxic chemicals accumulate in the fatty tissues. These contaminants are also hormone disruptors because they mimic estrogen. The EPA has observed and documented hormonal imbalance, suppressed immune systems, reproductive infertility and alterations in fetal development of animals. In viewing the big picture, these factors are perhaps the most frightening results from the widespread use of chlorine."
In Super Nutrition for Healthy Hearts Dr Richard Passwater explains how "the origin of heart disease is akin to the origin of cancer" Chlorination could very well be a key factor linking these two major diseases. Chlorine creates THM's and haloforms. These potent chemical pollutants can trigger the production of excess free radicals in our bodies. Free radicals cause cell damage. Excess free radicals can cause normal smooth muscle cells in the arterial wall to go haywire, to mutate. The fibrous plaque consequently formed is essentially a benign tumor. Unfortunately, this tumor is linked with the origin of heart disease."
Is Bromine a safe alternative?
Known Bromine Dangers:
* If spilled on skin it produces painful sores
* Has strong unpleasant odor
* Is Toxic
* Converts to dichlorobromomethane, bromoform and bromate
* The Metropolitan Emergency Response Network defines dichlorobromomethan as particularly dangerous and harmful (see below)
Vapor will attack the eyes and lungs
* Causes cancer
* Damages skin
* Damages the liver
* Causes depression and brain damage
* Damages the nervous system and muscles
* Bromine vapors are known to reduce male sperm count, causes malformed sperm resulting in birth defects and causes male infertility
* Maximum safety precautions should be used when handling it
The Metropolitan Emergency Response Network advises: "Dichlorobromomethane should be handled as a CARCINOGEN--WITH EXTREME CAUTION. * Exposure can irritate the eyes, nose and throat. Higher levels can irritate the lungs and may cause you to become dizzy, light-headed and to pass out. Could cause death. * Repeated exposures affects the liver. * Contact can irritate the skin."
EVEN WORSE, some pool and spa suppliers urge using both chlorine and bromine together - which doubles their sales.Combining chlorine and bromine is the second most powerful cancer-causing liquid mixture only surpassed by drinking highly radioactive liquids.
When combined, chlorine and bromine make 97 carcinogens, 82 mutagens, 28 acute and chronic toxic contaminants and 23 tumor promoters. Many of these complex chemicals resulting from the conversion of chlorine and bromine to other chemicals permanently accumulate in a person's body fat. Each time exposed, the level of carcinogens, mutagens, toxins and tumor promoters increases. With each increase, the risk of cancer increases to a point of it no longer is a question of if the person will develop cancer. It is only a question of how soon. Each exposure from that point means sooner than before.
To dive into a swimming pool and claim "see, I'm ok" is no different from a person holding up radioactive material making the same claim. Both expose the body to dangerous carcinogens and detrimental elements that can permanently damage a person's cells - primarily in body fat. The more the exposure, the higher the concentration becomes.
Who makes such a claim? Essentially every chemist and doctors in the field of environmental toxins, the EPA, medical researchers, and essentially all health professionals and experts in the fields of cancer and toxins, except those employed by the chemical manufacturers of chlorine and bromine.Chlorine also is the number one cause of household poisoning and is particularly dangerous to children.
Those who sell chlorine claim it is a safe household pool chemical and declare that hydrogen peroxide is a danger if carried in a car that is in a massive auto accident, are side-stepping a fact. Beyond the extreme health dangers and damaged caused by chlorine used in water, it is also the single most dangerous of all chemicals to have at home. For instance, in 1997, 217,989 calls were made to the Poison Control Center and of those 62,023 were about chlorine. This means that 28.4 percent of all calls were related to poisonings by chlorine products. What's even more important, is that most of those calls were about children under 6 years of age.
The difference in the dangers of chlorine and bromine compared to hydrogen peroxide is clear. Chlorine and bromine are two of the most deadly poisons in existence, both of which have immediate killing power and long term killing consequences on the DNA and cellular systems. These toxins kill everything, including people. Hydrogen peroxide on the other hand kills micro-organisms by over oxidizing them with too much oxygen. Hydrogen peroxide is water and oxygen, two of the most essential and beneficial elements to the human body. The star contrast between the deadly elements Chlorine and Bromine and the benefits you can derive from Hydrogen Peroxide is astounding..
Why people switch to h2o2 for their pools and spas:
One reason is to answer a simple question: Why don't you use your pool or spa more frequently?
While some switch for reasons of personal health (pool chemicals are very harmful), most have a more basic reason. They want to enjoy using their pool or spa.
The main reason people with pools and spas quickly come to rarely actually use - or even sit by - their pool or spa is an instinctive health repulsion your body recognizes, even though you do not consciously recognize the danger. The water and area smells like chemicals. The water stings your eyes and turns them red. Skin turns white to deep layers and for sometimes can just peel off depending on the extent of exposure.
People familiar with h2o2 treatment of pools and spas will not use toxic pool chemicals. As you might expect, there are people who do not want to relax or swim in toxic chemicals or breathe toxic fumes. Rather, they want to relax is pure, clean water that isn't detrimental to their health.
It also is increasingly understood that the "relatively safe" (as often called) pool chemicals interact with other chemicals and organic compounds that enter a pool or spa, resulting in chemical composition of the pool chemicals to change to even more dangerous and harmful chemicals. The list is long and varies depending on the pool chemicals used. Included are chemicals known to be carcinogens and damage the lungs, liver and brain. Some are very complex molecular structures. Others are simple and obvious.
When any organic life form is destroyed,ammonia is formed. Most pool chemicals contain chlorine or bleach (or derivatives). Bleach and ammonia combine to form chlorine gas, which is what was used in death penalty gas chambers and in WWI chemical weapons.
The chemicals also continue to build up with each treatment by pool chemicals, because the working chemicals have converted to other non working and more dangerous forms. Quickly, the pool becomes a toxic concentration of chemicals, rather than the pure water swimming pool. The combinations and complexities of the toxic chemicals would kill a person within seconds destroying their body as if in a vat of acid were it not for the high level of dilution as a result of the water in your pool. Instead, it only burns your eyes, wrinkles your skin, and possibly kills you slowly across time.
This is why most people often plan to use their pool or spa, but do not. They come to start telling themselves that they should use their pool and spa more often out of some sense of duty to use the thing they paid so much money for and some sense of guilt - almost like a person saying "I should go to church more often". Of course, pools and spas are not about duty, they are suppose to be about pleasure and cleanliness. This also is why most people reject offers to come over and swim in their pool.
The subconscious mind is very survival oriented. Just like it will know that gasoline fumes are harmful and drinking gasoline would be harmful, it also is putting up powerful resistance to using the pool of chemicals or even being around the fumes of it.
Some people switch to h2o2 for their pool or spa because they are health conscious. However, most switch because their pool or spa is more enjoyable to use and be around after switching from Chlorine treatments.
Smell Factor:
To understand the "smell" benefits of hydrogen peroxide over dirty water with organic waste in it or the smell of chemicals in a treated pool or spa is to understand what hydrogen peroxide is and what it does in nature.
Hydrogen peroxide is the molecule h2o2. This means it has water (h2o) and an extra oxygen molecule that is attached. It is a liquid. However, it also is only semi-stable. Contact with organic substances of any kind, with a short list of minerals or U.V. light (such as sunlight) causes it to decompose. This means it releases the extra oxygen molecule in gaseous form of 100% pure oxygen and what remains is 100% pure water.
Pure oxygen is extremely deadly for micro-organisms. Essentially, it burns them. If you have ever been on oxygen while in a hospital, you may remember that if the oxygen level was turned up too high, your nose would start to burn. While oxygen is extremely beneficial, if the level is too high it causes organic substances to burn (actually they "rust", but I will avoid the chemistry in detail.) Hydrogen peroxide also is a charged molecule, very movement active.
On the molecular level, h2o2 will kill simple organisms. It does so by decomposing to pure water and pure oxygen when it comes into contact with a micro-organism. In a pool or spa, it acts similar to the human immune system, in which immunity system cells attack foreign objections, but do not harm the larger life form (you.) This is how h2o2 works; it uses pure oxygen against micro-organisms.
Pool chemicals in bath water for health?
Many people add hydrogen peroxide to their bath and foot bath water for health reasons. H2O2 oxygenates the skin and helps to cleansing it (skin is porous and builds upon waste excretion). Hydrogen Peroxide also kills fungus and other micro-organisms that live on and just below skin surface. There is no harmful side effects possible because h2o2 is non-toxic.
No one pours typical chlorine and bromine pool chemicals into their bath water believing it is healthy.
HOW HYDROGEN PEROXIDE WORKS AGAINST ORGANIC SUBSTANCES
Hydrogen peroxide has been called a "kamikaze" or a "depth charge" chemical against organic substances. H2o2 is simply water (h2o) with an extra oxygen molecule loosely attached (h2o2). When h2o2 contacts any organic molecule, the contact knocks off the extra oxygen molecule.
The result is two fold. First, energy is released. Though certainly not noticeable at the atomic/molecular level, the power in "decomposing" h2o2 is so great that hydrogen peroxide has been used to power rockets into space, powered the X-15 first subsonic jet and the U.S.S.R. supersonic attack torpedoes. When the atom breaks free, the potential energy within the molecule is released, resulting in a flash of steam heat. The first "killing" ability of the h2o2 is to blow up the organic molecule.
The free oxygen atom then impacts the organic molecule, resulting in the molecule oxidizing. Organic substances in contact with pure oxygen "burn" (or more precisely oxidize. The combined result is that the organic molecule is blown up and burned).
What remains, then, of the hydrogen peroxide atom? It is now only pure water (h2o2) and pure oxygen (o). It destroys the organic substance and then converts itself to pure water and pure oxygen in the process. There are no toxins in hydrogen peroxide and it is the pure bio-degrading chemical that can not build up in your pool or spa. It not only destroys organic contamination, but also destroys itself in the process to the two purest and most beneficial chemicals: pure water and pure oxygen. There are no other elements in hydrogen peroxide.
Toxin Free:
A Hydrogen Peroxide pool treatment is not only non-toxic and safe, it actually is good for your skin because of its oxygenating properties (rather than bleaching and poisoning it).
As the parts of h2o2 are only pure water and pure oxygen, it will naturally decompose in its usage cycle for a 100% decomposition into pure and safe parts of water and oxygen only. Thus, there is no chemical build up nor conversion to other chemical compounds.
Pool and Spa usage is most popular with our customers and the most rapidly growing area of sales.
Spa Usage and Costs:
I can not imagine anyone with a spa using any toxic or dangerous chemicals in their spa. The cost difference makes hydrogen peroxide highly attractive if all actual costs are calculated. If you add the innumerable support chemicals, testing, and frequency of draining the pool, the comparison makes h2o2 the obvious choice. If you try h2o2 in your spa, you will fall in love with your spa again and never go back to chlorine, bromine or "secret ingredient" pool chemicals which few can pronounce let alone attest t the safety of. The h2o2 will eliminate the bad smells that come from untreated spa water, without the chemical smell of other spa treatments.
Pond Maintenance:
Hydrogen peroxide also can be used in ponds with plants to reduce algae and micro-organism growth.The finest commercial aquariums now use h2o2 to treat their tanks, which contain sea life inventories valued into the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Draining and cleaning tanks is extremely costly, dangerous to sea life that has to be removed and particularly harmful to plant life that can not be removed. However, they can not use the toxic chemicals used for water treatment.
What they found is that h2o2 "attacks" the lowest life forms first - meaning the micro organisms such as fungus and bacteria that harms their sea life. Next, the h2o2 will attack algae and lowest plant life forms.
They cease h2o2 treatment at that level to avoid harming the higher plant, fish and other aquatic life. The h2o2 that remains in the water will quickly decompose to merely pure water and gaseous oxygen by its interaction with the organic matter in the tank and U.V. from the display lights or sunlight if outdoors.
We DO NOT recommend amateur usage of h2o2 in ponds or aquariums with fish. This requires fairly exact testing of concentration levels and supervision that is best left to the professionals in marine life. However, h2o2 treatment is an outstanding way to minimize algae, fungus and other infestations growth turning a beautiful pond into a smelly, cloudy mini swamp.
Safety Issues of 35% hydrogen peroxide:
Hydrogen peroxide for water treatment has been extremely popular and preferred across Europe for decades and in greater numbers in the U.S.A. each month. It not only poised economic challenge to the suppliers of pool chemicals (that require more pool chemicals, refreshing pool chemicals, and then pump-it-all-out and start again with chemicals - but also the manufacturers of complex pool systems for usage of such chemicals.
There is little legitimate criticism to make of hydrogen peroxide, because in diluted form it is good for your health. Yet the chlorine and bromine merchants must find reason. As a result, we have read some very alarmist warnings of the dangers of hydrogen peroxide. The most common is to read "Imagine the terrible thing that could happen in a serious auto accident in which the hydrogen peroxide bottle is broken!" That is a curious one, given that vehicle also contains many gallons of explosive gasoline and an impact would have to be massive to bust a plastic bottle being driven home. The solution is to transport hydrogen peroxide (and all other chemicals) in the trunk or back of your truck.
There is a danger factor to 35% hydrogen peroxide concerning handling that applies to all chemicals in general. It is highly concentrated and if undiluted will sting a person's skin. If you spill 35% hydrogen peroxide on you, in a few seconds your skin will start to sting and to turn white where contact was made. The "treatment" is to quickly wash the area off with water or any safe liquid (soda pop or any other non harmful water based liquid.) Your skin will continue to sting for a few minutes and will turn light yellow or white where there was contact. Within half an hour to an hour, skin color will return to normal. There will be no scarring and no toxins entered the body as h2o2 has no toxins.
Like all liquid chemicals, concentrated hydrogen peroxide can damage eyes. Unlike other chemicals that are not water based, flushing the eyes with water not only is the treatment, but water also dilutes hydrogen peroxide to a safe concentration level. If highly diluted, h2o2 is safe to drink and millions of people world wide use hydrogen peroxide as an internal health supplement (it must be VERY diluted) - something not true for nearly all other chemicals.
35% hydrogen peroxide will not burn or explode. If spilled on the ground where plants grow, spray it with water to reduce the concentration and it will benefit the plants and grass. Gardens and farmers use hydrogen peroxide for house plants, gardens and commercial farming to oxygenate the soil and kill harmful micro-organisms.
The only safety issue of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide is to avoid splashing it on yourself or in your eyes, and to store it away from children or incompetent adults. Carry it in your trunk if moving it.
SAFETY COMPARISON:
Once the hydrogen peroxide is diluted in your pool or spa, there are exactly ZERO safety issues. When diluted, all danger vanishes. H2o2 contains no poisons or toxins or any harmful substance. It is water and oxygen. It does not cause cancer. It does not harm or age skin (it refreshes skin). It does not harm the liver, brain, nervous system or brain. Hydrogen peroxide in your pool or spa as the water treatment will not and can not harm you.
Once in the pool or spa, it is 100% safe, completely non harmful and only beneficial to your health.The safety issues for typical pool chemicals begin when added to your pool or spa. You just put poisons in your water. They will interact with other chemicals and organic substances to make more toxins. And each time you add pool chemicals, the concentration of toxins in both the water and surrounding air equally increases. Those toxins and poisons harm you. They can slowly kill you. The air around your pool or spa, and therefore around your home, also contains these toxins and poisons that you breathe every day and every night. Day after month after year.
KEEP YOUR POOL OR SPA - GET RID OF THE CHEMICALS:
For the majority of people, the health damage is very gradual. However, some people have strong allergic reactions to some of the chemicals in pool and spa chemicals - or the chemicals made by those chemicals. Although no conscious of why, some people will come to so deeply dislike their spa they will leave them permanently drained or even throw them away. Others will fill in their pool or sell their house to buy one without a pool.
While concentrated hydrogen peroxide should be stored and handled with common sense, the true safety distinction is that h2o2 becomes only beneficial once added to a pool or spa. Most pool and spa chemicals make their dangerous aspects when they are put into your water.
HYDROGEN PEROXIDE IS NOT A RARE, COUNTER-CULTURE ENVIRONMENTALIST NICHE MARKET FOR WATER PURIFICATION
Chlorine and Bromine are sold as pool, spa and hot tub chemicals to people who know little to nothing about water purification. Hydrogen peroxide is used by the true professionals. Here are just a few examples of our own experience:
The Fort Worth, Texas Water Gardens covers many acres. It is sunken, heavily covered with old trees, and has hundreds of yards of flowing water, hundreds of feet of water curtains, ponds and fountains. They do not use chlorine or bromine. They use hydrogen peroxide. Because the area is sunken there is little wind. The fumes of chlorine or bromine would be unbearable. Those chemicals would kill the trees. It would stain the stone and brick work. Instead, with hydrogen peroxide, there is no smell at all. It will not harm the vegetation or bleach out the stone and bricks. It is such a perfect system the only clue the water is treated at all is a hydrogen peroxide sticker on the door to the small pump room.
When a large local urban water supply (drinking water) reached levels of toxins and cancer-causing agents, the pending crisis called in the experts. To try to determine the cause, they had to test incoming water without chlorine or bromine to eliminate all the poisons and cancer causing chemicals they create when they interact with organic material. To do so, they used hydrogen peroxide (from us) to kill the organics - thus leaving only the chemicals from the water - not from the chlorine and bromine. To no surprise, it was learned that it was the chlorine interacting with higher than average organic material that was causing the poisoning of the water.
This is not rare. In our own small community, there have been two notices in the last year that the water was dangerously high in cancer causing chemicals - and that the cause was the chemicals used in the water treatment. To address this, they had to dramatically cut back on chemical treatment and instructed people to boil the water before consuming to kill organic contamination. Note what most mattered in safety. Nothing could remove the toxic chemicals - there were the real danger. Boiling would eliminate the lesser danger of micro-organisms.
The largest chain of commercial aquariums in the U.S.A. use G.O.E. 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide to treat the water in their huge aquariums - without removing the sea life and fish. While this requires expertise, treating an aquarium with the sea life still in it with chlorine or bromine would result in killing everything in the aquarium.
Chlorine and bromine are sold to home pool, spa and hot tub owners on the P.T. Barnum principle: 'There is a sucker born every minute". They even convince customers that somehow doing so enters the person into an exact science of water treatment - with endlessly testing the water's PH factors, adding chemicals, offset chemicals, balancing chemicals, anti-foaming chemicals... It is a sucker's play to do so. More than eliminating organic growth in your pool, you want to avoid poisonous and toxic chemicals in the water. That seems obvious. I have no concerns swimming in a river or lake in terms of organic life in it. My only concern would be if it has dangerous chemicals. Given the choice between swimming in a river or swimming in a chemical waste water dump?
Putting poisons and toxic chemicals in your pool, spa or hot tub is not what a rational person knowingly does.
SAFE FOR YOUR POOL OR SPA FILTER AND PUMP?
Some pool and spa chemical suppliers and Internet retailers warn that hydrogen peroxide will damage the pump and/or filtration system. Is this true?
The answer is no, maybe, and no.
Hydrogen peroxide in a concentrated form can damage natural rubber and certain metal (silver). Nearly all pools and spas use plastic, steel, synthetic "rubber", fiberglass and stainless steel. Those would not be harmed by any concentration of hydrogen peroxide.
The answer is "maybe" if natural rubber is used AND if you have the mindset of the chemical merchants. Their view of water treatment is that you pour powerful chemicals into your pool to remain permanently in the water. As those turn to other chemicals, you then should add more chemical. Finally, when the chemical soup is so out-of-wack and awful, you should pump it all out and start with a new chemical soup and repeat the process.
There is no rationality if following that apparent love of chemicals in usage of hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide will kill the organics - and convert itself to pure water and pure oxygen in doing so. What hydrogen peroxide remains will also convert to water and oxygen over the next few days by reaction to the U.V. in sunlight. No only does h2o2 purge your pool of organic contamination, it also then purges your pool of itself. There is no increasingly chemical build up with h2o2.
Most who use h2o2 for their pool add it at night, turn off the pump and forget about it. Across the night the atoms of h2o2 will destroy micro-organisms. The next day, the sun will reduce the h2o2 concentration further. The pool owner can turn on the pump anytime.
Most bleaches, chlorine and pool chemicals also harm rubber - and unlike h2o2 they also build up chemical film and clogging build up. So IF you have natural rubber fittings and IF you pour in lots of h2o2 over and over like other pool chemicals, it could damage your seals, fittings and pump like other pool chemicals ultimately do.
So then the final "no", not if you use h2o2 as h2o2, rather than like other pool and spa chemicals - meaning always building up the level of chemicals in your water.
TERRIBLY FOULED POOLS AND SPAS:
Some pools and spas are neglected for months and even years, resulting in terrible levels of growth fouling. As the pool or spa dries out time to time, this also forms a thick crust, like a contaminated ship bottom. A high concentration of hydrogen peroxide will kill the growth and even will remove surface layers of it, but will not remove dense dead growth on the pool surfaces. This would allow renewed usage of the pool without further growth from the fouled surfaces, but there would still be the unsightly appearance.
There are rare instances where this is desirable, however, in the instance of decorative ponds or "pond pools" in which the pool is stone lined or otherwise made to look like a natural pond in a natural setting. Having a natural appearing pond or pool, but also with clear and clean water, is a challenge not met by pool chemicals.
PONDS, POND POOLS (swimming holes) AND LIVING POOLS
For the natural appearance effect, the pond or natural appearance pool is deliberately allowed to foul. Then the "green growth" is hydrogen peroxide killed to prevent further growth. From that point, the water is h2o2 treated. This allows crystal clear and clean water, but without the antiseptic swimming pool appearance.
It is possible to have a safe swimming pond or pool with plant growth using h2o2. However, this does take paying attention to some detail to avoid too high and too low levels. This will be unique to each pond. H2o2 will destroy small organisms first and then the higher (or larger) life forms. Thus, in a living pond or pool the level of h2o2 usage is sporadic. A high concentration level of h2o2 is used (usually for half a day) and then the level reduced to very low to sustain maintenance, but not damage the plants. Very small trace amounts of h2o2 are beneficial to nearly all plants.
POOL SIDE PLANT LIFE
Some people struggle to keep plant life around a pool where water is splashed or spilled on the plants or grass areas. Pool chemicals kill plants. While concentrated hydrogen peroxide also would be harmful to plants, the level of dilution of pool water is beneficial to plants. Gardeners and farmers use hydrogen peroxide for soil treatment and even plant watering water. The benefit is so great that if you do drain an hydrogen peroxide treated pool or spa, you can do so onto grass and for plant and tree watering.
There is no pool chemical that can honestly say it would help your plants and yard if you poured pool water on it. This is true with a hydrogen peroxide treated pool.
HOW TO USE HYDROGEN PEROXIDE IN YOUR POOL OR SPA?
For a spa, we do recommend you drain it to get rid of all chemicals. However, h2o2 will not adversely interact with current pool chemicals and some will transition to h2o2 usage. If your pool is highly organically fouled, you may want to use a much higher initial level of h2o2 to kill the organics, drain this, and then go to the same maintenance levels as for a pool.
For a pool, it is not necessary to drain the pool if you do not want to until when you would regularly drain the pool while using pool chemicals. Or you may want to transition to h2o2 at that time. Hydrogen peroxide will not have any adverse reaction or interaction with pool chemicals. The level of h2o2 suggested below will vary by the amount of organic material that comes into the water (leaves, dust) and by pool usage that then also brings contaminating organics into the water. Within the context of the water volume in a swimming pool, increasing concentration to address high pool usage or high organic content can not reach a harmful level no matter how high a concentration you decide to use.