HOW HYDROGEN PEROXIDE WORKS AGAINST ORGANIC SUBSTANCES
I copied this from this website http://www.dfwx.com/pool.htm for the ones that read the one minute cure to give you a better understanding of how important Hydrogen Peroxide is and how use full it can be.
HOW HYDROGEN PEROXIDE WORKS AGAINST ORGANIC SUBSTANCES
Hydrogen peroxide has been called a "kamikaze" or "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 kinetic energy holding that atom 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 burning the molecule. 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.
NO TOXINS IN HYDROGEN PEROXIDE:
H2o2 in pool treatment is not only neither toxic nor harmful, it actually is good for your skin by oxygenating skin (rather than bleaching and poisoning it).
As the elements of h2o2 are only pure water and pure oxygen, it will naturally decompose in its usage cycle for 100% decomposition into pure and safe atoms of water and oxygen only. Thus, there is no chemical build up nor conversion to other chemical compositions.
Pool and Spa usage is the largest volume percentage of our customers and the most rapidly growing area of sales.
Contents:
The hydrogen peroxide of our pool and spa packs are IDENTICAL to G.O.E. 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide - the premium source of food grade hydrogen peroxide for internal health usage as a health supplement. G.O.E. prohibits selling any 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide as "food grade" under their name that is more than 30 days old from sealing.
For pool and spa 35% hydrogen peroxide, G.O.E. does not guarantee the contents are less than 30 days old and will allow up to 90 days for gallons stating their usage is for pools and spas. However, it is labeled "Pool and Spa" rather than "Food Grade" for the distinction. Pool and Spa 35% hydrogen peroxide is 100% suitable for any other usage of food grade hydrogen peroxide. Its concentration level at 90 days will be 34.4 to 34.1% and has exactly the same level of purity.
H2o2 never "spoils" or goes bad. However, over time it does "decompose", which means releasing the extra oxygen molecule of its h2o2 composition.
While it can vary depending upon temperature of storage and whether exposed to U.V. light, if properly stored h2o2 will decompose at a rate of 1/4 to 1/2% concentration level per month. As concentration gradually reduces, its rate of decomposition slows.
Pool and Spa 35% hydrogen peroxide is NOT outdated G.O.E. h2o2 food grade hydrogen peroxide that has been relabeled. No bottles are allowed to be changed. Generally it will be as fresh and less than 30 days from sealing. But we are allowed to offer it for sale up to 90 days from being sealed. G.O.E. is very exact on quality standards. The result is unmatched quality, purity and potency at a notably reduced price.
Spa Usage and Costs
I can not imagine anyone with a spa using any toxic or nauseous chemicals in their spa. The cost difference makes hydrogen peroxide highly attractive if all actual costs are figured.
While h2o2 can cost more than other pool chemicals, if you add the numerous support chemicals, testing, and frequency of draining the pool to total comparison makes h2o2 less costly. 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. The h2o2 will eliminate the bad smells that come from untreated spa water, but also has none of the chemical smell of spa treatment chemicals.
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 level at that point to avoid harm to 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 ENVIROMENTALIST 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.
The company name "Guardian of Eden" refers to the Biblical angel left to block admission back into the Garden. In their product line, G.O.E. pursues re-creating the nutritional environment when the earth was new and pure.