Ask HN: Why not add salt to lakes and swimming pools to reduce drownings?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32299209

by amichail • 4 years ago

1 12 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Would this be feasible?

chiefalchemist• 4 years ago

How would salt reduce drownings?

aleken• 4 years ago

Perhaps @chiefalchemist is thinking about how salty water is more floaty water.

theGeatZhopa3• 4 years ago

Just like it does in the dead see. You just have to spread your wings and fly ... Kind of.

Seriously, that's a good question which needs a dumb answer.

theGeatZhopa3• 4 years ago

You'll need quite a lot of salt added to achieve that effect. But then, you have to consider:

- salt in high concentrations ist deadly to every lively being.

We, and all living cells or even viruses, need water as solvent for our chem-biological processes. When there are some changes in water/salt ratio - the chemical process stop working.

But that's not the problem with your idea.

The real problem, the drawing would stop, but the people will drink themselves to literally death, as thirst comes up.. or, may be they will turn conservated like pork. Or even dry out like dry mummies

josephcsible• 4 years ago

Water that you swim in is already unfit to drink in any significant quantity, and it's not deadly just to swim in really salty water.

theGeatZhopa3• 4 years ago

It was a joke, that by making people drown less with salt in pools, one'll get other deaths.

And all the effects salt has on our environment and us. One big point is that non-saltwater organics will die at even low concentration of salt in f.e. in soil, while saltwater organics will die too when salt concentrations level "dead sea" will be spilled into canalization system/rivers wherever.

Of course it's not deadly to swim in salt water. But the salt water is deadly by itself.

spindle• 4 years ago

I'm looking forward to hearing an answer from someone who actually knows. My guess is that you'd need so much salt that it would add significantly to the cost

togaen• 4 years ago

To make a meaningful difference you’d have to add so much salt that swimming just wouldn’t be fun anymore. Never mind the utter infeasibility of it all in the first place:

Add salt to lakes, kill every living thing in and around the lake, deal with an enormous amount of rotting bio matter, and probably poison drinking water for an entire ecosystem.

Add it to pools, deal with salt deposits everywhere that ruin all the pool equipment, and make the water so saline that you can’t dump it anywhere.

afiori2• 4 years ago

To make a meaningful difference you’d have to add so much salt that swimming just wouldn’t be fun anymore

It is way easier not drown in the ocean (unless there are waves). In saltwater you can mostly stay still and keep you face out of the water; in pool water it requires a lot more effort (both physical to keep yourself up and mental to control your breathing) and I say this as someone with more fat than the average person)

stop50• 4 years ago

Assuming we implement this 1. The amount of salt would pollute water resources for the next ~20 -30 years on average, regions that use Surface water would be the first to buy expensive water purifier tech. 2. People mostly drown in the swimming context because they overestimated their abilities. Swimming courses and lifeguards schould prevent that.

thagerty• 4 years ago

And the pool pumps would have to be replaced to deal with increased corrosion. I know of one such pool in a retirement home that had the saltwater pumps taken out because of cost saving measures. And the amount of salt was nowhere near enough to 'prevent drowning.'

Ask HN: Why not add salt to lakes and swimming pools to reduce drownings?

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