Is Bromine Safe At 16Ppm?

[walleye]

I was wanting to use my tub, but I shocked it a few hours ago and the Bromine is at 16 ppm. Is is safe to go in at this level?

[K.Cool]

I was wanting to use my tub, but I shocked it a few hours ago and the Bromine is at 16PPM. Is is safe to go in at this level?

I believe you should not go in if the bromine level is 10ppm or over. Have you tried running the jets with the cover off for a while? That always brings my levels down quickly after shocking (if I use bleach, not dichlor).

[walleye]

I was wanting to use my tub, but I shocked it a few hours ago and the Bromine is at 16PPM. Is is safe to go in at this level?

I believe you should not go in if the bromine level is 10ppm or over. Have you tried running the jets with the cover off for a while? That always brings my levels down quickly after shocking (if I use bleach, not dichlor).

Yes, I have been running all 3 pumps. Levels are maintaining. I will have to wait I guess. I sure would like to know what the level limits are and what the health effects are. What would happen if I went in a hot tub with 16 ppm for a half hour?

[chem geek]

You can always use a reducing agent such as hydrogen peroxide (which is both an oxidizer and a reducer) to lower chlorine (and in some conditions bromine) level. The rule of thumb with chlorine is that the same volume of 3% hydrogen peroxide neutralizes 6% bleach. Roughly speaking, one fluid ounce of 3% hydrogen peroxide will neutralize 4.8 ppm chlorine or 10.8 ppm bromine in 100 gallons, so scale up based on spa size.

Since we're not sure if Hydrogen Peroxide will reduce bromine levels, try it out and let us know what happens. The worst thing would be that the hydrogen peroxide gets used up and the bromine level goes up some instead of down.

[walleye]

Thanks Chem Geek. That is helpful information as usual from you. I still would like to know what the consequences would have been had I soaked in 16 ppm for a half hour or so. If 10 ppm is the norm upper limit, I thought 16 may be OK once. What is the limit of never going in at all? Thanks.

[chem geek]

If you soak in excessively high oxidizer levels, be it chlorine or bromine or MPS or hydrogen peroxide, the effect is similar in that your skin, swimsuit and hair (if wet) get oxidized proportionately faster. In extreme cases, this could irritate your skin and in less extreme cases it could cause the skin to be flakier (i.e. slough off more dead skin cells) and hair frizzier. If you were to open your eyes underwater, you'd probably feel irritation in your eyes. Your swimsuit would have its elasticity wear out faster, get a little thinner, and possibly fade a bit. Spa components, such as covers, will deteriorate faster. However, for a single exposure at the level you describe I doubt that you will notice many, if any, of these symptoms. It's more over repeated exposure at high levels where such things become much more noticeable.

There are other side effects such as a greater creation of disinfection by-products, but I doubt you'd notice that unless you were to use chlorine at high levels where you could smell nitrogen trichloride. Chlorine and bromine will outgas faster at high levels so you might smell more of that as well.

As for a limit of never going in at all, there are government (EPA and county/state regs) limits for commercial/public pools, but there are no rules for private pools. The problems become proportionately greater at higher levels so there isn't really a single "limit" where all of a sudden everything becomes horrible. It just gets worse and worse the higher the active oxidizer level and the longer the exposure. For people using chlorine with CYA in the water, we usually say that the shock level where the FC is around 40% of the CYA level is a reasonable and practical limit, but technically it is equivalent to 0.6 ppm FC with no CYA in active chlorine level so is lower than in most indoor commercial/public pools. For bromine not coming from tabs (so no DMH in the water), probably levels above 5 ppm and certainly 10 ppm are to be avoided long-term while bromine from tabs could probably go higher before being a noticeable issue. Remember also that in a hot tub the hot water makes all chemical reactions go much faster so the corresponding limits should probably be lower than that for pools -- if oxidation rate effects are the primary concern.