Is It Dangerous to Try and Move Chlorine Bucket?

Do you have a swimming pool? Is this chlorine for your swimming pool? Do you understand how to chlorinate your pool, including how to handle the chlorine and how to determine how much should go in your pool?

I don't have a swimming pool, and don't know exactly how to deal with any of the above, but someone who has a pool and is the one in charge of it, must know a lot about this.

Part of my point is--yes chlorine can be dangerous, both as a gas, and in solution in water, where it basically forms hydrochloric acid if I'm not mistaken. Yet, people with pools put some number of these 3" tablets in their pools to kill bacteria, and people swim in that very dilute solution of hydrochloric acid. You bleach your clothes with a slightly more concentrated solution of hydrochloric acid.

So, it can be handled safely, and does not need to be disposed of in a hazardous landfill. But, it does require careful and knowledgeable handling.

If you don't have a pool, find somebody who has a pool, tell them what you have, and ask them if they'd like to have it.

In the meantime:

• don't spill it on you or anybody else,
• don't breathe the vapors
• try to put it in a location where no animal can get into it, but I'd recommend not inside your house unless you can make sure you won't spill and the lid is on securely
  

Thanks for responding so fast. I do have a swimming pool and I understand how to chlorinate it and maintain the proper level using a test kit. The 3" tab is a 7 oz. slow-dissolving tab that is simply dropped in the skimmer. I had about 35 tabs left from a 48 lb. bucket. The smell and color when I opened it is what concerned me. I was afraid that the water in the sealed bucket turned it into a toxic hazard.

Re: and does not need to be disposed of in a hazardous landfill

Just looking back for a few posts I intended to respond to yesterday, but couldn't because I exceeded the posting limit (it seems to be max 36 in 24 hours, unless somebody else is on my network ;-).

Anyway, I came back to this one, and I see it isn't quite what I intended to say.

I don't know whether still partially intact 3" chlorine tablets would have to be disposed of in a hazardous landfill or not.

My point was to suggest that they not be disposed of, but instead, carefully used for their original purpose. Likewise for the water in the bucket which has partially dissolved some of the tablets.

Bit of research came up with Trichloroisocyanuric acid as the active constituent of swimming-pool tablets. The seller I found had this on the page:

More information here.

Thank you for your help.

Add 1/4 cup and your whites will be whiter than white.

REALLY late answer to the question. I am a chemist and a pool owner.

I hope you are OK.

If you can see the greenish gas, it is DEFINITELY a dangerous situation. Chlorine gas is toxic and was used as a chemical weapon in WWI (it wasn't very good as a weapon, because it dissipated too quickly and didn't kill everyone that smelled it). But it can harm or kill you if you breathe it.

I suggest calling the poison control center (for anyone in a similar situation, presumably the problem from 2011 has been resolved, for better or worse)

A few people die every year from Chlorine gas exposure - usually at a public pool that has tanks of the stuff for chlorination. There is usually a small room for the tanks, and someone gets in there when the Cl2 has leaked.

Not exactly the same problem described here, but it IS the same Cl2 gas. BE CAREFUL.

Dr. Tad