Pool urine dye

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It is a common myth that there is some chemical put in pools that will change color when someone urinates in the pool. This is commonly told to people, especially children, to discourage them from urinating in the pool. It doesn't really exist, unfortunately.

A chemical could be made that reacts to urine and changes color, but the problem is that it would react to other stuff too and create lots of embarrassing false positives.

When I was a kid, the adults would give each of us a bag of M&Ms, sorted by color, before we could go into the pool.

Then they would warn us that they would know who peed in the pool by what color the water turned.

We didn't fully believe them, but no one ever tested the claim (to my knowledge), until I secretly switched colors with one of my sisters . . .

There is currently a TV ad running for "Pretty Litter" The litter changes color; red for the detection of blood; orange for kidney stones; dark yellow/olive green for normal; and blue /dark green for an UTI. Couldn't similar technology be used for detecting urine in pools?

No one ever told me about this. I can't remember ever wanting to pee in a pool though.

It already exists, but would also react to people's sweat.  Also, normal pool treatments almost immediately produce chloramines when pool chlorine comes in contact with sweat and urine.  This results in the "pool smell" you experience at most public (and some private) pools.

We would normally do a "shock" treatment of the pool on the Monday after a weekend pool party to eliminate the pool smell, algae, and any remaining fecal matter so we could start using it again on Tuesday.

Did you know that untreated home spas ("Hot Tubs") can spread UTIs and yeast infections?  They too should receive some form of chlorination, before and after each use, and especially when emptied and refilled.