Paesta Podcasts

You Asked, We Answered! Transcript of the podcast Hello my name is Laura Delgadillo, I am a student at Penn State Brandywine and today I’d like to answer the question: Why did the water in the Olympic pools in Rio this past summer turned green? The issue started because [1] a local pool maintenance worker applied hydrogen peroxide to the pool when it already had chlorine. Hydrogen peroxide is good for cleaning pools but not when it is combined with chlorine. It was a chemical misbalance. [2] Hydrogen peroxide was dropped into the pools by the contractor and hydrogen peroxide undoes what chlorine is supposed to do which is kill germs and keep the water clean. Nonetheless, since the water had to be clean for synchronized swimmers to be able to see each other under water, for water polo players, and for divers, the solution was to drain both pools off of all their water and refill them with clean water from the practice pools in time for these events to be able to happen. Now after the public sa