What exactly does chlorine kill!?

So, today in class we were playing with hula hoops. One of the last exercises we did had us trying to get 3 people though a series of 6 hoops using 1 tank (we had a primary and a secondary regulator) this obviously required us to buddy breath though the whole thing. After class I was thinking about it and realized that I had just successfully "swapped spit" with 3 different people in less than an hour (I was buddy breathing with my usual buddy for another exercise we did before this). I know chlorine can take care of things like pee in the water, but how good is it!? By moving the regulator quickly though the water will the chlorine actually kill anything that manages to latch onto it? For the 2 breaths that a regulator is in your mouth, can you actually pass on a nasty cold or anything else?? (Not that you would be diving with a bad cold) .... Im not really too worried about this, just very curious. Any input would be appreciated!

I am no expert. I think that there is not enough contact time for the low concentration of chlorine in a swimming pool to kill any bacteria, virus, or protozoan. Then again if it is only saliva and not contaminated blood from gums or discharge from a cold there may be no worries.

I think there is a health or medical section on this board with experts that can better answer this question.

Quote from the rather excellent water and health.com

Chlorine in swimming pools kills the germs that may make people sick, but it takes time. Chlorine in properly disinfected pools kills most germs that cause RWIs within minutes. However, it takes longer to kill some germs such as Cryptosporidium that can survive for days in even a properly disinfected pool.

So, no, I guess.

Chlorine, even in a pool is pretty powerful stuff. I doubt any bad bugs will survive a swish or two in a properly maintained pool.

From:
CAN YOU GET AN ILLNESS OR VIRUS FROM A PUBLIC SWIMMING POOL? - Yahoo! Answers

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker
cryptosporidium - a protozoan parasite --
is notorious for causing outbreaks of diarrhea that are transmitted in city swimming pools.

it is NOT killed by routine levels of chorination

off the top of my head, that is the only one that is common.
there were many many things mentioned by respondent above - and I"m sorry to say that all are wrong. You cannot get the common cold, impetigo, scabies, ..... from water in a swimming pool. All of those require close personal contact.
Source(s):
I'm an infectious disease specialist - MD

Ok yall, I do this for a living...

The active killing form of chlorine in a pool is hypochlorous acid, or HOCL. There are really very few truely chlorine resistant organisms out there. Cryptosporidia is the one that has the water sanitation industry (includes drinking water) all wound up. For good reason. Giardia is another resistant organism. It takes about 45 minutes to kill giardia at 1ppm free chlorine. It takes 15,300 minutes to inactivate crypto at the same level.

The common cold virus and other infective agents that could be on a reg are not known to be chlorine resistant. They would be killed (or inactivated) in a few seconds. There was an outbreak at a water park in Atlanta in the late 90's that killed a child. The pool was not properly chlorinated. It was the strain of E-coli that causes people to get sick from eating raw ground beef. E. coli O157-H7. Lab testing showed that at 1ppm chlorine it was killed in about 60 seconds.

Yes, a properly chemically maintained swimming pool will kill disease causing organisms. That being said, it still isn't a good idea to drink the water.

TwoBit

The OP was not worried about the pool water, but rather the saliva or other fluids stuck on the Reg mouth piece when buddy breathing.

One suggestion is to only practice buddy breathing with your significant other. I did it with my wife.

Also, pee is not taken care off by chlorine in a swimming pool. Pee is sterile to began with, what it contains are electrolytes, water, left over vitamins, minerals and various non-living waste chemicals.

Chlorine only reacts with organics and living stuff. Oh, and causes faster corrosion of metals.

Chlorine also can bleach the living daylights out of colored clothing, and even (with prolonged exposure to pool water) start bleaching your hair.

At higher concentrations, it's deadly to pretty much any living thing. You don't want to stick around if someone spills a barrel of liquid chlorine.

When the canine parvovirus was first getting a lot of attention among dog owners, one of the risks about it was that it was highly resistant to most cleaning methods. You could scrub a concrete kennel, and still have live parvovirus on the surfaces. One thing that DID wipe it out reliably was to use chlorine bleach to disinfect kennel surfaces and fixtures.

Unfortunately, thick enough concentrations of chlorine to reliably kill ANYTHING would also be a danger to us. I don't know about you, but I'm not much for the idea of swimming in a pool of poison.

That's why man made vulcanized dry suits.