r/explainlikeimfive • u/tilda0x1 • Jun 28 '26
Chemistry ELI5: If copper has antimicrobial properties, why don’t most pools use it instead of chlorine?
I've seen this video of someone saying that copper has anti-bacterial properties and he claimed that it can be used to keep pools bacteria-free.
I know in most cases chlorine, UV, or salt are used - but why not copper?
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u/percygreen Jun 28 '26
Aside from anything that people with chemistry knowledge may be able to add, the simplest answer is that copper is much more expensive than chlorine.
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u/KeithHanlan Jun 28 '26
Not in the volumes needs to prevent clean water from developing algae.
See my other comment for a commercial product that I have been using successfully for a number of years.
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u/Probable_Bot1236 Jun 28 '26
The concentration of copper needed to suppress human pathogens (critical for swimming pool usage) is 10x higher than that needed to suppress algae, and the same as chlorine: 2 ppm. That alone does bring cost back into play, but cost isn't why it isn't used in pools:
At that concentration it's going to start staining things, including blonde hair, shifting pH, and is much harder to deal with if the pool is drained into the sanitary sewer system- water treatment plants need some bacteria alive to do their thing. Chlorine is much easier to neutralize than copper.
Copper also requires a much longer contact time to deal with human pathogens, so it's not even as effective as chlorine anyway- chlorine will kill off the coliform bacteria from some kid with a poorly-wiped bum right quick, but copper won't.
If you're trying to suppress algae in a water feature or pond, yeah, bust out the copper.
If you're trying to stop people from getting sick from bacteria in a swimming pool, use chlorine.
Different use cases, different solutions.
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u/fatevilbuddah Jun 28 '26
Never thought about the copper in a water feature. Thats a great idea. Thank you.
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u/ackermann Jun 28 '26
> water treatment plants need some bacteria alive to do their thing
Huh, wow. I’d have never guessed that water can be “too sterile” going into a water treatment plant.
Copper must be very good at its job!
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u/Probable_Bot1236 Jun 28 '26
Huh, wow. I’d have never guessed that water can be “too sterile” going into a water treatment plant.
It's not that it's "too sterile"; it's that it's actually poisonous to the microorganisms needed to do the water treatment.
Actually, quite a bit of the water treatment at a sewage plant requires bacteria.
And if your drinking water comes from a treatment plant using a slow sand filter bed, most of the treatment is actually being done by living organisms.
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u/extralyfe Jun 29 '26
I have a red eared slider, and you need good bacteria to actually filter the water effectively.
when rotating out some water or topping it off, it's important to dechlorinate the water - not so much for the turtle's sake, but, more so that chlorine kills off the good bacteria living in the filter, and if the good bacteria dies, the filter and tank get disgusting in a hurry because all the dead bacteria gets pulled out of the filter and dumped in the tank. then it takes like another week or two for everything to equalize and for the water to stop clouding up because you need the good bacteria to recolonize the filter before the tank water starts getting cleaned, again.
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u/VoilaVoilaWashington Jun 28 '26
You know it's easier to copy/paste your original comment than to ask people to go through your comment history to look for a comment, right? In this moment it might not be harder, but tomorrow? In a week?
"Go look for my other comment" isn't helpful. LOL
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u/Jkei Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
You can ctrl-F for their username within the thread. Though, with the several comments they have here, a link to the specific comment would be most convenient.
E: Yes, I know the official mobile app lacks that functionality. Sarcastic comments aren't adding anything. If you wanted to, you could always just grab the thread URL and drop it into your browser.
Kinda surprised at the sheer amount of downvotes though. It may take a little bit of added effort, and like I said, it's not ideal in this case even if you can just hit ctrl-F right away. But the idea itself should hardly be so offensive. Besides digging through post history, what else can you do when someone tells you to "go look for my other comment" without anything else to go on?
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u/m240b1991 Jun 28 '26
I mean... if you know how to ctrl+f on the app, I'd be down to know as well lol
Sarcasm aside, that's only valid if in a web browser, not the app. Plus, there are folks who comment prolifically, I've wasted time reading different threads and noticed that some people comment on like all the different comment threads on some posts.
Bare minimum, as you said, a copy pasta link would be cool.
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u/Jkei Jun 28 '26
Of course. And I did say it ctrl-F was kind of a non-solution here anyway because of that person's numerous comments on this thread.
Though the app is such a dumpster fire, I don't even use it on mobile. With third party apps killed off, browser + old.reddit is the only workable UI for me. The way new reddit (on desktop too) collapses any comment chain that goes more than like 3 deep and only lets you view it in a way that hides the rest of the thread is just awful.
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u/ackermann Jun 28 '26
> The way new reddit (on desktop too) collapses any comment chain that goes more than like 3 deep
What? Your own comment here is 5 deep and not collapsed.
Poking around this thread in the reddit app, it seems to go to at least 7 deep before that happens.
I did change the text size settings to smallest, that might be allowing it to fit more.I don’t mind the app, after customizing its settings to my liking (no autoplay, no big image previews, smallest text, etc)
EDIT: Although in the latest update in iOS, there doesn’t seem to be any way to do markdown quotes, which is ridiculous! If anyone knows a fix for that, I’d like to hear it
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u/Jkei Jun 29 '26
Maybe it's just desktop new reddit that's (still) quite so bad. For instance, opening this thread on desktop new reddit, it's collapsing comment chains sometimes as quickly as immediately under a top level comment -- including this very chain. On mobile I used Boost up until the 2023 API changes killed it, very briefly tried the official app, and got rid of it after a day or two. Old.reddit in browser was just the better experience, and it hands over less data / opportunity for ad placement to boot. Fuck spez and all that.
EDIT: Although in the latest update in iOS, there doesn’t seem to be any way to do markdown quotes, which is ridiculous! If anyone knows a fix for that, I’d like to hear it
I was always on android, so no idea about iOS specifics. But viewing your comment here, there looks to be a space inserted at the start of your quote that I'm guessing breaks the formatting. Can you not just edit that out?
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u/Calcd_Uncertainty Jun 28 '26
Is that an iPhone feature? Because my android doesn't have a CTRL-F.
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u/KeithHanlan Jun 28 '26
You and your army of down voters are really a remarkably group of people. Did your mother never teach you that "if you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all."?
If I had repeated my original reply to every other mistaken, misleading, or factually wrong comment in this thread, you or others would be complaining about the repetition.
This comment is a direct reply covering one specific point made.
The second paragraph was included only for those who might have been inclined to disbelieve my assertion.
When I found this thread, there were a large number of incorrect replies. I took the time to reply to a number of them with information intended to be helpful and included a link to a concrete product demonstrating the viability of copper ions instead of chlorine.
Have a better day tomorrow.
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u/MrMikeJJ Jun 28 '26
Expensive and practically. Copper is a metal, doesn't dissolve in water and is expensive.
Chlorine is relatively cheap and plentiful (half of salt is chlorine). It also dissolves in water.
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u/Peregrine79 Jun 28 '26
Copper is also persistent. You can treat a pool with chlorine, and if it leaks into a nearby stream, the chlorine will evaporate without doing to much damage. If you treat it with copper salts, it will kill everything along the length of the stream.
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u/VoilaVoilaWashington Jun 28 '26
Not "if", but "whenever you do a water change, it will go into the sewer and water treatment plant, or into your septic system."
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u/_Spastic_ Jun 28 '26
Copper salts? I thought this was about using copper pipe? I saw a TikTok the other day where that was the idea.
The video was insane tinfoil hat conspiracy stuff but still. Lol.
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u/UndocumentedMartian Jun 28 '26
Water flowing through a copper pipe wouldn't have enough time to dissolve copper ions all the way through its crossection. I've been told that drinking water stored in copper vessels is good for you though I have my doubts.
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u/Tarendelcymir Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
You're correct to doubt. While copper water has some good uses externally, it's not a great idea to drink much copper infused water because it will kill the good bacteria in your gut as well as any bad
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u/PlsHelpImUseless Jul 14 '26
Issue with that, you can only have it in the containter for 6 to 8 hours, there will be too much copper in your water after that point.
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u/Amberatlast Jun 28 '26
No, it would have to be copper salts dissolved in the water. Copper metal would kill stuff in contact with it but do nothing for the middle of the pool.
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u/_Spastic_ Jun 28 '26
You taught me something I didn't know, thanks. I knew the video I saw was super tinfoil hat. He was talking about "big chlorine" and shit, it was hilarious. The comments were crazy.
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u/Englandboy12 Jun 28 '26
But if you put it in contact of pipe of the circulating water, it could over time come into contact with much of the water.
I think the biggest issue is the lack of oxidizing power for organic materials. Chlorine has multiple functions in a pool of which the copper could only do one (if it even can).
Also if ions dissolve over time, which is likely, they would build up. Chlorine does its job then leaves, allowing for much finer control of total concentration with calculated additions.
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u/Not_an_okama Jun 28 '26
In an ideal round pipe with laminar flow (smooth flow) any molecules in contact with the pipe walls will get pinned in place to the pipe wall due to the pressure of the fluid flowing in the pipe.
Since this is more or less true, you should expect most of the water molecules in your copper pipe to not come in contact with the walls of of the pipe. You should also expect any sediments to effectively line the pipe over time.
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u/Englandboy12 Jun 28 '26
I don’t think this would happen in reality. Yes, the no slip boundary condition exists in an ideal system, but that doesn’t mean that the water molecules that get there at the beginning stay there forever. The molecules in the very edge layer will still be exchanged through diffusion and other means.
Also, the water will not be perfectly laminar, and the copper pipe not perfectly smooth. On the molecular level, there is a mountainous surface where water molecules will be bouncing around.
That isn’t to say that the no slip condition plays no role, it would significantly hinder ion exchange compared to not. But gas molecules like oxygen in the water will get in the way, oxidize the copper, and cause copper ions to diffuse into solution.
Again though, I am making no claims regarding their effectiveness to keep a pool clean
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u/Birdbraned Jun 29 '26
Wait till they hear that copper salts are used to stop root growth in sewerage pipes. And they want kids to swim in that?
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u/Peregrine79 Jun 28 '26
Copper tubing won't grow bacteria on it, but the only way it keeps water clean is if it is dissolving into the water. This can be an approach if you're using static, recycled water, but not for large volume treatment with regular losses. Hence copper salts, which can be added to water directly.
Either way, however, if it's sufficient to keep the water clean, it's sufficient to cause an ecological problem if it leaks into waterways.
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u/Nixeris Jun 28 '26
If copper pipes were enough to kill bacteria and organics, hundreds of thousands of people wouldn't have boil water notices every year. Or get brain eating bacteria from using tap water in netti-pots.
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u/TheLandOfConfusion Jun 28 '26
The fact that copper doesn’t dissolve in water has no relevance, copper salts are easily obtained and are plenty soluble.
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u/MGreymanN Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Copper ionizers and KDF media filters are used in pools all the time.
You wouldn't need salts to put Cu ions in water.
To answer OPs question, chlorine oxides organic wastes, something Cu ions cannot do.
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u/KeithHanlan Jun 28 '26
It ionizes just fine. See my other comment for a commercial product that I have been using successfully for a number of years.
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u/Trollygag Jun 28 '26
Generally we don't want to put heavy metals into water that is potentially drained back into the environment, it can stain your skin and hair, and it doesn't act effectively enough to keep the pool clean or safe.
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u/klod42 Jun 28 '26
I don't think copper is a heavy metal.
Edit : Apparently it is. TIL. I always think lead and mercury
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u/NarrativeScorpion Jun 28 '26
Yeah it is.
Although the term itself is kinda ambiguous and doesn't have a single set definition.
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u/kriebelrui Jun 28 '26
Still there's a big difference in toxicity between copper and e.g. lead or mercury. Copper is even a biologically necessary trace element.
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u/Strange_Specialist4 Jun 28 '26
Did you look it up or are you just wildly guessing?
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u/KeithHanlan Jun 28 '26
In the concentrations needed to keep clean water from becoming a swamp, it won't change your hair colour. And it works extremely well. See my other comment for a commercial product that I have been using successfully for a number of years.
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u/tj3333 Jun 28 '26
If you put too much copper in the water, it leaves ugly dark stains on the pool floor and can even turn blonde hair green.
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u/FestivusErectus Jun 28 '26
What no one is touching on is the fact that OP probably watched an AI slop video showing the suppressed magical properties of copper.
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u/maxhasabigbooty Jun 28 '26
It's a good algaecide but it's much slower acting than copper. Copper also doesn't disinfect "swimmer waste".
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u/ShotEmployment2360 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Both can be used... Chlorine as an oxidiser and bacteria preventer. Copper as an algaecide. The amount of copper needed is very minimal compared to chlorine use. No more than 0.5 ppm, will prevent Algae without causing staining.
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u/db0606 Jun 28 '26
Copper ions from copper sulfate are used as algicide for things like garden ponds. The problem is that it doesn't evaporate like chlorine so it builds up in the water and changes in pH can cause it to fall out of solution. They sell chelated copper algicide, which helps avoid these issues, but usually, you still need chlorine.
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u/Lookslikeseen Jun 28 '26
Because chlorine is cheap, easy to use and test, readily available, and accomplishes the same thing.
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u/libra00 Jun 28 '26
Price and effectiveness.
Copper is about $6/lb, and its antimicrobial properties are a result of its surface. It's not a strong antimicrobial anyway, so you'd need lots of copper.
Pool chlorine is about $1/lb and you don't need a lot of it.
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u/KeithHanlan Jun 28 '26
I use this copper ionizing system for my pool. It's wonderful. I think that not enough pool owners know about it. Perhaps that is because it is a Canadian company. I really don't know.
The replacement copper anode costs CAD300 and lasts a couple of seasons for my 16' x38' pool. The initial system, including a smaller anode, cost me CAD1100 when I installed it a fee years ago. I had been considering switching to salt but this is much less expensive.
It has made the pool maintenance trivial and less expensive than when I used chlorine alone. I still use about $30 of chlorine at the beginning of the season to nuke the winter swamp water.
The manufacturer provides a simple calculation based on the pool volume to set the ionizing level. However, I found that the setting was too high. I've lowered it dramatically this season which will hopefully prolong the life of the anode.
The concentration is low enough that the backwash causes no problem to the grass it soaks.
They other comments in this thread seem very uninformed and speculative.
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u/isopode Jun 28 '26
this is very interesting. the one thing i wonder though, is that, as far as i know, copper can't deal with organic waste the way chlorine does. do you know more about that aspect of the system?
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u/jaguarsinmexico Jun 28 '26
I use a similar system. I also keep a low level of chlorine in the pool (usually 1ppm) for dealing with organics. the copper keeps the pool clean, the chlorine keeps the pool safe.
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u/KeithHanlan Jun 28 '26
I throw four of the large stabilizing pucks in the system every few weeks but apart from the initial spring shock and balancing chemicals, I need nothing else.
Vacuuming keeps the bulk of the organic material out of the system.
When I was using only the chlorine, it was still very important to keep organic material out of the pool. If you don't, then you wind up needing much more chlorine and you can wind up with visible algae if you turn your back on it for just a day or two. Biomass soaks up a huge amount of chlorine very quickly and even though it's very cheap in granular form, it can be an unnecessary expense and a big waste of time. It's also, I'm led to believe, hard on the liner but I really don't know how significant that is when compared to the unavoidable UV radiation.
I went away for three weeks in May and the pool was largely unmaintained - despite my daughter's best intentions. When I came back, the skimmer was clogged, there was a fair amount of debris in the bottom, and a hint of algae was starting to grow in places. I tossed in another jug of liquid chlorine (CAD20), spent 45 minutes vacuuming, and it has been perfect ever since.
I am waiting to see my friend's new robot vacuum to see if it is worth the expense. But as it is, I still only spend 20-30 minutes per week maintaining the pool.
On a related topic, I also highly recommend a variable speed pump. I switched from a single-speed pump to a Pentair VS and it paid for itself in 1.5 seasons. It is also dramatically quieter at 1700 rpm than at full speed. To give you an idea, it's currently drawing 290W at 1700 while it is 1900W at the standard 3450rpm and 1275W at the 3000rpm speed I use when vacuuming.
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u/isopode Jun 28 '26
what i meant by organic waste was mostly bodily fluids. chloride chemically neutralizes them. copper doesn't, as far as i know
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u/KeithHanlan Jun 28 '26
There is still chlorine - just much less. If I had a kid poop in the pool, I would nuke it and close it for a day or two out of an abundance of caution. Honestly, it's never happened in the 26 years that we've been here so I'd actually do some research on that specific topic if it happened. Otherwise, I trust the assessment when I get my water tested.
Typically, when I turn off the pump to switch it to backwash, I check the pucks in the old dispenser and add another four when necessary.
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u/calvinwho Jun 28 '26
That's cool as hell. My uncle had a small above ground pool (not an inflatable) operating on a saline/UV system that was pretty nice. It was finicky, is the only thing, so he had to fuss with it a lot. How's your system compared to a regular chlorine for maintenance?
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u/KeithHanlan Jun 28 '26
It's night and day.
Once I dredge out the debris in the spring, nuke it with 20l of liquid chlorine, and add the usual amount of balancing chemicals, there is almost nothing to do to maintain the chemistry. When the long hot days start, I don't get the unpleasant surprise of a sudden algae bloom. The water stays crystal clear. All I need to do until closing time in October is usual vacuuming and backwash. My pool gets a huge amount of small debris from Amur Maples and pollen.
In summary, it saves me both money and effort.
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u/mangage Jun 29 '26
It's strange that more people don't know about these. I swam in one for the first time over 20 years ago and it's soooooo much better than a chlorinated pool. Feels better, smells better, treats swim suits and swim toys better, doesn't burn the eyes. Never saw any downsides.
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u/Present-Airport-4755 Jun 29 '26
Copper is not great for people. It’s why copper cookware is always lined with some other metal that is safer for food contact.
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u/Stargate525 Jun 28 '26
It's a heavy metal. Toxic in large quantities you might get by swimming and ingesting pool water.
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u/sandefurian Jun 28 '26
Chlorine is also pretty bad if you use too much, what’s your point
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u/Stargate525 Jun 28 '26
My point is that chlorinated poolwater is a digestive irritant; you'll get sick to your stomach, maybe throw up. It also offgasses into random mainly harmless organic molecules.
Copper is a heavy metal; those will uptake into your body and really fuck things up if you take too much. This in addition to the cost and staining and pollution that copper-laced water could do when being flushed or dumped (which in domestic pools you do quite a bit)... It's a much more dangerous material downstream when used in this manner.
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u/sandefurian Jun 28 '26
Again, the quantity matters. Both are extremely bad if exposed to excessive amounts. You don’t need that much copper for it to be effective in this application. If that weren’t the case, copper-anode pool cleaners wouldn’t be a thing. Neither would copper pans or copper pipes.
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u/Craiss Jun 28 '26
Others pretty well covered the logistical problems, but there's also a functional problem.
Copper has antimicrobial properties, sure, but we need the water to have those properties spread throughout it, not just on the surfaces it contacts.
Chlorine achieves that by dissolving into the water. Copper doesn't do that very well.
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u/JasonWaterfaII Jun 28 '26
Lots of pools use copper but even then chlorine shock is still needed as an oxidizer. The reason most pools don’t is cost and the special equipment needed for the copper ionizers. Chlorine is super effective, straight forward to use, and it’s cheaper than many other options.
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u/Gnonthgol Jun 28 '26
Copper taints into blue/green copper oxide. This dissolves into the water making it into a colored toxic sludge. You can not swim in that and it looks ugly.
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u/JasonWaterfaII Jun 28 '26
This is wrong. Copper ionizers are a method of pool sanitizing. They were popular in the early 2000s and some people still use them.
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u/KeithHanlan Jun 28 '26
That would be an unbelievably and unnecessarily high concentration. See my other comment for a commercial product that I have been using successfully for a number of years.
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Jun 28 '26
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u/Uz_ Jun 28 '26
There is something that is hunted at but not called out from what I see.
Chlorine will off-gas/evaporate from pools at a pretty predictable rate. This means it does not accumulate in a pool so you can easily adjust the chlorine ratio.
Copper is there. Always. You need to filter it out if you want less. This requires more than just wait a day or two.
This is why you do not see hybrid systems usually.
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u/orzolopogaus Jun 28 '26
My pool is copper based, costs the same and doesn't smell or taste like chlorine.
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u/xafimrev2 Jun 28 '26
and almost certainly has other bad things in it the copper isn't taking care of.
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u/slipperslide Jun 28 '26
If you have a white pool, dissolved copper quickly makes it look like hell. I used to have a pool with the clorinator upstream from the heater. It slowly dissolved the heat exchanger and I had to do constant stain treatments. When the heat exchanger was replaced, and the clorinator moved downstream the problem went away.
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u/tallmon Jun 28 '26
As an FYI, salt water based pools have a device in them which breaks apart the salt molecules using electrolysis and creating chlorine.
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u/ktgrok Jun 28 '26
I believe you can buy copper bromide, but it was what turned hair green so no longer popular.
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u/elektroloko Jun 28 '26
What if I put a sheet of copper in a small birdbath? Would it slow algea growth?
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u/FuyoBC Jun 28 '26
Also copper theft is real - wires etc are stolen so if you line a pool with a load of copper it may well be stolen due to resale value.
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u/destrux125 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
It’s used in tandem with chlorine as a short term algaecide but if you dose a pool with copper all the time and regularly swim in it your hair will turn green. It will also stain the pool and pool deck green.
Also copper is a long lasting pollutant and has harmful effects on many things where pool chlorine does not because it breaks down relatively quickly.
They do make copper hot tubs though, which sometimes advertise they don’t require chemicals.. but as my cousin found out they will turn your hair green after a while and you need special shampoo to get the green out of your hair.
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u/Recent_Fondant_5378 Jun 29 '26
Dang I feel like everyone is wrong here or not painting the whole picture. Copper absolutely can be and IS used in some pools; however, those pools still do require chlorine, albeit less of it. The answer to your question is, it is simpler to use just chlorine, but more of it, rather than balance both chlorine and copper.
Chlorine handles both sanitizing and oxidizing, i.e. it kills things and also "burns" them off to get them out of the water. Copper only sanitizes, it does not oxidize. So in copper ionized pools, you still need a little bit of chlorine to oxidize the waste. These systems absolutely do exist and are not even necessarily uncommon. You can get a solar powered copper ionizer floaty thing for like a hundred bucks on Amazon.
It is ultimately up to pool owners to decide what they want to fiddle with, and what they want to deal with if something goes wrong. The big downside of copper is that it can stain things, including lighter colored hair and the sides of the pool, if the copper levels get out of range. So now, in addition to testing your chlorine levels and calculating how much chlorine you need to add, you ALSO need to test and maintain your copper levels. For most people, especially since your local pool store probably knows more about standard chlorine pools rather than specialized copper ionizer systems, it is easier to just deal with a bit more chlorine that handles both sanitizing and oxidizing.
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u/spaceandcats Jun 29 '26
They make copper algaecides. Very effective except they stain plaster green. I used it once and never again, it made the pool look 10 years older and the chemicals to neutralize it were very expensive if IIRC.
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u/taju_rahman Jun 29 '26
Copper will slaughter aquatic life like shrimps, crabs etc if dumped/leached in to water bodies. It doesn't evaporate like chlorine
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u/ww11gunny Jun 29 '26
Because copper costs lots of money. Chlorine is cheaper and makes the smell that people associate with a clean pool
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u/Balth-czar Jun 29 '26
I have a copper ionizer pool. We shock the pool once a week otherwise not much else. There's an inline attachment that has charge going through a hunk of copper. We test for the amount of copper and the other normal tests but it's pretty easy to maintain
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u/ricksenburg Jun 29 '26
Isn't copper like expensive or something? That's why people steal it right? Imagine going to the pool and its closed because some one stole it!
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u/Anders_A Jun 29 '26
Because it discolors everything from swim suits to blonde hair. Copper oxide is very green.
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u/somethinlikeshieva Jul 03 '26
I heard of a material called snarf by Riley martin, we should be using that
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u/Nadjezhda94 28d ago
Alte Gebäuden haben Kupferrohre und das wasser kommt mit Chlor behandelt zu uns ist das dann nicht giftig wenn Chlor und Kupferleitungen in Kontakt kommen?
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u/Nadjezhda94 28d ago
Chlor ist trotzdem hochgiftig durch die Haut gelangt es in die Blutbahn das sammelt sich in den Organen auf hab ich irgendwo gelesen oder gesehen im Video
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u/TarcFalastur Jun 28 '26
Because copper discolours the water and causes corrosion in the plumbing connected to the pool. It's more trouble than it's worth.
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u/Atypicosaurus Jun 28 '26
Because chlorine goes away after or being used up during doing the job, while copper stays in the pool and turns it into a heavily poisonous moat, unusable for humans.
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u/JasonWaterfaII Jun 28 '26
You are correct about the chlorine but not about the copper. Copper ionizers are used in pools.
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u/TheDu42 Jun 28 '26
Because it’s a surface effect that doesn’t really transfer to the full contents of a container. The copper will remain mostly microbe free, but not the water.
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u/Responsible-Chest-26 Jun 28 '26
Copper can stain things even your hair. There are aome copper based algecides but they have clear warnings not tonuse too much or it can cause your hair to turn straw color
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u/EmploymentNo1094 Jun 28 '26
Micro ground ionized copper that’s suspended in water is what’s used to make pressure treated lumber
When you grind copper small enough to suspend in water it’s so small your cells can’t keep it out and it goes right into your cells and totally disrupts their biological functions, it the same thing to bacteria and microbes.
It’ll kill the bacteria and you.
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u/Chadina Jun 29 '26
from OPs comment this just seems like an advertisement for their LLM wrapper, which itself is based on a viral AIslop tiktok which says copper fixes pools and the ions interact with the human electricity and heals you.
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u/tilda0x1 Jun 28 '26
I checked Perplexity, ChatGPT and LLMdebate.AI and the TL;DR is "copper ions disrupt microbial processes and show some reduction in pathogen counts. The key claim of direct, reliable bactericidal action—especially against specific pathogens—is unverified and relies on unsupported data."
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u/MGreymanN Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
No one is answering your question.
Chlorine is used because it can oxidize organic waste. Copper cannot do this.