Crystalite brochure (8)
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Tel. (Pta) 012 669 3025 or 012 669 9919 or 081 5959 604 Fax. (Pta) 086 652 6752 e-mail (Pta) admin@cosmodec or (Pta) gene@cosmodec.co.za
P O Box 123 Laezonia 0026 Pretoria Web address: http:///www.cosmodec.co.za
1 Lt. Price R135.00 - ex works ex VAT. Enquire about agency and dealer discounts !
Easy to use Crystalite is a uniquely formulated safe chemical mix designed to clarify swimming pool water.
Crystalite prevents pool water from turning green even during the most hostile conditions such as after thunder storms.
Crystalite has been 5 years in the making, carefully formulated by microbiologists and water treatment specialists.
Crystalite
contains no chlorine.Backwash or rinse water can be directed onto grass, flowers, gardens etc with no detrimental effects.
Birds love to bath in Crystalite water and insects are attracted to it.
Gone are the days of burning eyes, and all the other negatives associated with chlorine.
Crystalite does not harm pool pump seals
Crystalite does not harm swimwear.
Instructions (For 50,000 Lt. Pool)
Check pH to be between 6,2 and 7,0.
Backwash.
With pool pump and motor running and valve set to filter position, pour entire content of container of
Crystalite into the weir. (Do not pour directly into the pool )This is sufficient for one month.
Back wash once weekly or when necessary.
For added sanitation (particularly public pools, school pools, hotel pools etc.) Add one cup of chlorine per filter per week into the weir whilst the pump and motor is running, commencing 3 days after the
Crystalite has been added.Do not cast chlorine directly into the pool water.
For larger or smaller pools proportionately increase or decrease the quantity of
Crystalite.Sit back and A relax-a-voux @ while you and your family enjoy
Crystalite clear, safe, sanitized pool water year in and year out!Crystalite® now with Sun Block additive that helps to prevent sun burn when swimming in Crystalite® treated water. This is a world first South African patented technology exclusive to Cosmo-Dec and Crystalite®

Before Crystalite After crystalite A Crystalite pool is a beautiful pool Crystalite is used here Crystalite effect
Download Power Point slide show
Crystalite has an extraordinary alternate use in the equine world as a excellent hoof hardener and fungi and algi destroyer.
Simply brush onto the underside of the effected horses hoof about twice a month during the condition
African
Wildlife ISSUE 57 No. 2 AUTUMN 2003 (Apr/May/Jun)
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF SWIMMING POOLS by Dr John Ledger
There are 650 000 swimming pools in South Africa. Each one of them is treated with chemicals to maintain the water in a clear and hygienic condition. Every pool has a filter which is “back-washed” to clear sediment and residues. The back-wash contains at least some of the pool chemicals. What is the cumulative environmental impact of this cocktail in our streams and rivers?
Like
many middle-class South Africans, I succumbed to the pressure of my family to
“put in a pool”. Ours was small
(40 000 litres), of pleasing oval shape, with a water feature that enhanced our
indigenous garden. It was soothing to wake to the splash of running water, and
many birds came to bath in the waterfall. A flock of white-eyes pitched up every
afternoon to flutter and fluff their feathers, some of the tiny birds literally
being washed off their feet on occasion!
The pool became a feature of my daily life. Every morning I would scoop up the
leaves with a long-handled net, and fish drowned goggas from the weir. One
morning I put my hand in without looking and clutched a large, spiny, very much
alive Parktown Prawn! From then on I always looked first!
I learned how to test the pH of the water, and to keep it between 7.2 and 7.6
for the marbelite pool. The water was kept free of bacteria by throwing in a cup
of granular chlorine every day, to make the test water yellow at 2-3 parts per
million of chlorine. Once a month I would throw in a couple of litres of blue
compound to control algae and keep the water clear. The filter was back-washed
every week.
As the years went by the children used the pool less and less. I would come home
from trips away to find the weir completely blocked with leaves and the pump
motor stopped. The water chemistry often went haywire because of insufficient
chlorine. Green and black algae took over the water and the walls. I spent a
fortune on algaecides, only to stain the walls of the pool dark brown. Then I
threw in metal removers, water clarifiers, flocculants and magic Blue Goo,
guaranteed to make your water sparkle again like new. I actually began to hate
the pool because of its demands on my time.
One day I found what I thought would be the solution to my problems. A new,
two-pack magic bullet, a once a month pool treatment that promised sparkling
water and no hassles. First the clear liquid in the bottle, politely called the
“biocide”, was poured around the edge of the pool, then the floating plastic
chlorinator was placed in the weir. Pool peace at last!
Over the next few days I was mighty pleased with the sparkling water, but
something was wrong with the birds and the bees. The thrushes, bulbuls,
sparrows, weavers and white-eyes stopped bathing in the waterfall. The weir was
full of very dead insects. Previously the bugs in the weir usually stayed alive
for quite a long time, eventually drowning when they ran out of energy. But now
the insects seemed to die the moment they touched the water! During November
2002, I estimated that at least 1 000 honey bees, and numerous other insects of
many families and species, perished in my pool every week. What could it be? The
biocide, Boet!
I figured that this particular biocide was toxic not only to algae and bacteria
in the pool, but to insects as well. I stopped using the product, and went back
to granular chlorine. The birds came back to bath in the waterfall, and only a
few bees drowned in the weir every week. I resolved to share my experience with
others, and that is why you are reading this article. I phoned around, and I
spent a couple of hours in Selwyn’s pool shop in Rosettenville reading the
labels on the numerous products that people buy to keep their pools in shape.
I learned that South Africa has an estimated 650 000 swimming pools, distributed
along the following provincial lines: 58 per cent in Gauteng; 14 per cent in the
Western Cape; 14 per cent in KwaZulu-Natal; seven per cent in the Free State and
seven per cent in the Eastern Cape (the other provinces are incorporated in
those named). The number of pools is growing at about 1-2 per cent per annum,
but there is apparently a tendency towards building smaller pools (40-50
thousand litres) rather than larger ones.
My time in the pool shop taught me that pool chemicals have to be registered by
the Department of Agriculture in terms of Act 36 of 1947, the Fertilisers, Farm
Feeds and Agricultural Remedies Act. Some products for removing metals and for
water clarity apparently contain chemicals that do not require registration.
The basis of swimming pool treatment is chlorine, added to the pool daily or
every second day, and this is commonly in the form of Calcium Hypochloride or
Trichloroisocyanuric Acid. This controls bacteria in the water. Calcium
Hypochloride is the same chemical as household bleach, and we may use this in
low concentrations to sterilise drinking water, so it is not very toxic.
Algae in pools require a different armoury of chemicals, and their labels make
for heavy reading and difficult spelling. They may contain elemental copper with
carboxylate and polyhydroxy acid stabilisers; or Sodium Tetraborate
Pentahydrate; or Alkyl Dimethyl Benzyl Ammonium Chloride; or Didecyl Dimethyl
Ammonium Chloride; or Epichlorohydrin Polyamide Resin; or Benzalkonium Chloride;
or Polymerichiguanide Hydrochloride; or (wait for it!) Poly (2-Hydroxyethylene
– Dimethyliminio 2-Hydroxypropylene Dimethyliminio-Methylene) Dichloride.
Whew!
The manufacturers of pool chemicals have recognised that people like me are
looking for something more convenient than a cup of muti every day and a bottle
of algaecide every month, so there has been an increasing trend towards
longer-lasting products which incorporate chlorine compounds, algaecides and
water treatment chemicals. These are packaged as “floaters” or
“twin-packs” which should last for a month in an average-sized pool.
A newly released modern floater contains the following: Trichloroisocynuric Acid
686g/Kg; Sodium Dichloroisocyanurate 132g//Kg; N-Alkyl Dimethyl Benzyl Ammonium
Chloride 5g/Kg; Oxyethylene bis(Alkyl Dimethyl Ammonium Chloride) 2.3g/Kg; and
Poly(Oxyethylene (Dimethyliminio) Ethylene (Dimethyliminio) Ethylene Dichloride
1.2 g/Kg. The biocide which made my birds unhappy and killed my bees contains
N-Alkyl Dimethyl Benzyl Ammonium Chloride and Didecyl Dimethyl Ammonium
Chloride. If all the pools in South Africa used the same product as I did, we
could theoretically kill 650 million bees every week in the summer time. Makes
you think, doesn’t it?
So is this a call to environmental activists to launch a new campaign to Save
our Bees? Not at all! It is a request to readers to let me know about any
products that cause unusual insect mortality in swimming pools. It is a request
to our universities to undertake research to look at the possible effects of
swimming pool backwash on aquatic ecosystems, invertebrates and amphibia. It is
a request to the Registrar of Act 36 of 1947 to look carefully at the compounds
that are being combined in modern swimming pool chemicals. And it is a plea to
swimming pool chemical manufacturers to observe the principles of responsible
care implicit in the King II report on corporate governance.
Dr John Ledger was a
research entomologist at the South African Institute for Medical Research for 18
years. He directed the Endangered Wildlife Trust for 17 years. He is now an
independent consultant and writer on the environment.
SERIOUS HEALTH PROBLEMS WITH CHLORINATED POOLS
& SWIMMERS ASTHMA
Brent S Rushall Ph. D. R.Psy &
Larry Weisenthal, M.D.Ph.B
Published in Select, National Sports Medicine institute of the U.K. In 2003.
(Edited & abridged)
The vast majority of swimming pools use Chlorination as the sanitising method to maintain a ”healthy”, level of water hygiene. The understanding and control of chlorine concentration is far from and exact or trained science for those individuals often in charge of heavily used recreational and competitive swimming pools, and even for back garden private pools.
Chlorination is dangerous but institutionalised and accepted method of pool sanitation. Chlorine concentrations in water decline very quickly under a variety of pool conditions. To combat the decline in effectiveness problems, pools are often over- chlorinated to offset this, as a “precautionary measure”, to kill “missed”, bacteria. The heightened concentration of chlorine often leads to excessive absorption through the skin and inspiration leading to breathing problems in many swimmers. There is considerable variation in chlorine concentrations in fresh water, and salt converter pools, with the later usually being much higher, (Beech et al 1980)
The general rule of thumb about over – chlorination is: If you can smell the Chlorine in the pool it is dangerously high. When chlorination alone is the form of sanitization health threats exist.
There is considerable individual variation among swimmers sensitivity to chlorine concentrations. A majority can tolerate slight levels of over-chlorination but as the levels increase more individuals become noticeably affected.
Some of the substances released from chlorinated water includes bromodichloromethane, chloroform, dibromochloromethane and bromoform (collectively called THMs). Chlorine reacts with bodily proteins to form chloramines; the most volatile and prevalent in the air above swimming pools is nitrogen trichchloride (NCI3)
Why would chlorine in pools be a problem when it has been used for so long? Probably because of lack of knowledge and research and the growth of the sport. When chlorine escapes from pool water it is diluted in the available air space. This concentration of chlorine in the air is gradual, being highest at the water surface and least at the greatest distance from the surface. Chlorine concentration is also governed by the movement of air across the water surface. Many modern pools are not constructed to facilitate removal of escaping chlorine. Most indoor pools fall in this category.
This results in accumulated concentrations of THMs just above the water surface, this is, in the air that swimmers continually breath. Frequent users such as age-groups, school, college and competitive swimmers, suffer extended periods of periods of exaggerated breathing in this hyper-chlorinated micro-atmosphere.
In some outdoor pools, chlorine concentrations at the surface are lower because environmental breezes whisk the contaminant away, however when outdoor pools sides are high as with most modern pools, the atmosphere is heavy with moisture, and there is no breeze, dangerous atmospheric chlorine conditions can be produced. The atmosphere acts as a “blanket” that holds the escaping chlorine down at the surface where swimmers breath. That results in hyper-chlorination. This condition happens quite frequently, particularly in the early morning and late afternoon when serious swimmers are training.
The conditions of many pools are such that swimmers are subject to breathing in a toxic aeration, for chlorine is poison. (Decker & Koch)
Serious swimmers exacerbate the situation further. The intensity of their exercise is such that the volume of inspired air is increased by rises in frequency and volume of tidal air (Drobnic etal 1996, Helenius & Haahtela 2000). It is possible, that an exercising swimmer could be exposed to 30 or4 more times the volume of escaping chlorine by-products than that experienced by a passive onlooker. Many swimmers agitate the water through vigorous exercise which accelerates the release of chlorine into the atmosphere. When chlorine concentrations in the air are measured as part of pool maintenance, it is usually done when no swimmers are present and water is minimally disturbed. Thus, when a pool is deemed “safe” it is because of an arbitrary measure in rare conditions. It bears no relationship to what exists in a pool busy with competitive swimmers when the atmosphere of a “safe” chlorinated pool becomes toxic. Exercising in a chlorinated pool increases the level of assimilation of chlorine related gases, the greater the amount of exercise, the greater the concentrations absorbed THMs. Thus hard training swimmers are at greater risk than occasional recreational swimmers. It takes at east one night for absorbed substances to be removed from the body. If insufficient time exists between training sessions the possibility of toxic build-up is real ( Camman & Hubner 1995).
The benefits of swimming as a form of exercise are frequently extolled and demonstrated, however while the actions of the exercise in possibly non-threatening atmospheres are usually discussed; real threats of traditional environments are mostly ignored.
Regular attendance at chlorinated pools by young children was associated with an exposure dependent increase in lung epithelium permeability and increase in the risk of developing asthma, especially in association with other risk factors. It is postulated that increase exposure of children to chlorination products in pools might be an important cause of the rising incidence of childhood asthma and allergic diseases in industrialised countries.
Aiking et al (1994), concluded that toxic effects of chlorine products in swimmers training in chlorinated pools are greater in young than older swimmers. Young swimmers are therefore at greater health risk. The hypersensitivity of young children to pool chlorination was also emphasized by Wood, Colombo & Benson (1987). They reported two cases of serious respiratory injury in two young children exposed to chlorinator tablets backyard pools, so the reactivity of young children to chlorine products does emphasize the threat that hyper- chlorination presents to young people.
A different effect of chlorinated water on competitive swimmers was reported by Centerwall et al (1986) and Geurtsen (2000). Erosion of Dental Enamel was reported in competitive swimmers from the same club. Symptoms compatible with dental enamel erosion was reported by 3% of non-swimmers, 12 % of swimmers who are not members of the swim team and 39% of the swim team members all who had trained in the same gas-chlorinated pool with corrosion of metal fixtures and etching of cement and a pH of 2.7. Acid erosion of dental enamel, (swimmer erosion) is a painful , costly, irreversible condition which can be caused by inadequately maintained gas-chlorinated and granular treated swimming pools. Dentists who locate such erosion rarely link it to hyper-chlorine exposure but more to other causes. It should be remembered that chlorinated pools produce excessively elevated levels of acidity which will contribute to dental enamel erosion swimmers.
Nelemans et al (1994) reported a positive association between a history of swimming in chlorinated pools and melanoma risk, even after adjusting for sun exposure history. This suggests that carcinogenic agents in water, possibly chlorination by products, may play a role in melanoma etiology.
The most common adverse health effect related to pool chlorination are obstructive airway problems, particularly Asthma, as shown in extensive tests carried out by Dr. S J McGready who showed, in short, that of all athletes, swimmers where the worst affected in this respect and postulated that chlorination of pools was the reason for this situation. This finding was supported by Helenius (2000) and Landeau & Boulet (2001).
It seems that the more extensive the investigation, the more extensive are the discovered effects of chlorinated pools. Zwick et al (1990) compared competitive swimmers and matched control subjects for clinically manifest allergies, sub-clinical sensitisation to aeroallergens, unbalance of the cellular immune system, and bronchial hyper-responsiveness. These conditions were found to be more that twice as prevalent in the swimmers group than in the control group. This higher incidence of allergic diseases and disorder of the cellular immune system was attributed to repeated exposure to chlorine in swimming pools.
The symptoms of respiratory difficulties due to the atmosphere toxins are similar to asthma, which leads to the common diagnosis and treatment of the condition known as “swimmers asthma”. However it is proposed that the designation as asthma is incorrect. The reactions and problems are environment specific and are better classified as toxic reactions. When “chlorine asthmatics” swim in pools that are not chlorinated, or in pool that use different systems to sanitize the water, the asthma problems generally disappear.
It is reasonable to assert that a substitute for the ancient method of pool chlorination could resulting a reduction in the occurrence of “swimmers asthma” and a more healthful response to swimming both competitive and recreational, for both adults and children.
SUMMARY
There are alternative water treatments that will reduce or eradicate the amount of noxious chlorine related substances in swimming pool environments, while still providing excellent sanitization. They should be used in the interest of serious swimmers and young people, rather than persisting with singularly dangerous chlorine treatments. There are a number of complications and conclusion that can be drawn from works associated with evaluation of swimming in chlorinated pools. They are listed in point form;
REFERENCES
1. Aking, H van Acker, M B Scholten, R J Feebstra, J F & Valkenburg, H A (1994) Swimming Pool Chlorination A Health Hazard? Taxicology Letter 7211-31 375-380.
2. Bar-Or, & Inbar O (1992) Swimming and Asthma, Benefits and deleterious effects, Sports Medicine 14.
3. Beech J A, Diaz R, Ordaz c, & Palomeque B (1980). Nitrates, chlorates and Trihalomethanes in swimming pool water, American Journal of Public Health 70 (1)
4. Bernard A, Carbonelles, Miche IO, Higuet S hyperpermeability and asthma prevalence in school children, unexcpected associations in chlorinated swimming pools Occopational & Environ. Medicine 60.
5. Centerwall B S, Armstrong C W (1986) Erosion of Dental Enamel in Swimmers, American Journal of Epidemiology 123 (4) 641-647
6. Decker WJ, & Koch, chlorine poisoning in S/pools an overlooked hazard Clinical Taxicology 13(3)
7. Drobnic F Assessment of Chlorine exposure. Medicine & Science in Sports Exercise 28 (2)
8. Fjellbirkeland L (1995) Swimming induced asthma Tidsskr, Nor Laegeforen 115,2051-2053
9. Nerlemans PJ et al, Swimming and the risk of cuiuneous melanoma. Melanoma Research 4 281-286
10. Rusnak J (2003) Breath Taking, Splash 11 (6) 34/36
11. Wood B R Colombo J L (1987) Chlorine Inhalation roxicty from pool chlorinator tablets Pediatrics 79
Testimonials
"I have personally used CRYSTALITE for 12 months and it does just what it claims it can do........and more!"
Richard Church - Rivonia
"Against my better judgement I was persuaded to try CRYSTALITE for my seriously green pool. It really works. It`s amazing and so simple to use!"
Richard Irwin B.Com LLB and LLM (Harvard) - Hyde Park resident
" It cleaned my algae stained Pool just like that!"
Lorna Trickey - Rivonia resident
"Our green pool cleaned within a day!"
Gerda van Graan - Rivonia
"Cleaned our horrible green pool!"
Brenda Wallenda - Fourways Gardens
"Although my pool was well, managed and clean, I switched from granular chlorine to CRYSTALITE and after 6 months I`m delighted at how absolutely `hassel free` it is and am enjoying the freedom!"
Bob van Gemert Businessman and 20 years as Hardware/ pool chemical retailer