I mean, what about all the other body fluids/debris that are in pools? Saliva, sweat, earwax, belly button lint, bird shit, insects, band-aids, small animal carcasses that get trapped in the filters but are removed before the pool opens?
There's no avoiding other peoples/animals grossness, frankly whether your in a pool or just out and about.
Urine may be gross, but it's sterile, and at least for me, there are grosser things in pools.
I swim in the San Francisco Bay 3 times a week, 25 minutes at a time, no goggles, just a cap and a bathing suit. I've swum near gross things like dead seagulls & dead seals, and I'm sure a lot of gross stuff drains into the Bay, but as long as the sewage treatment plant doesn't overflow I'm not worried.
Agreed, that's kinda my point. The evolutionary theory behind why we have feelings of grossness is just that "this thing is potentially dangerous to me," so we developed this sense of "gross" so we'd avoid the potentially harmful thing (although a quick google search doesn't bring back the study i'm thinking of that demonstrated this). But obviously that reinforced/learned feeling might not always be accurate.
I get grossed out by plenty of things, so I have to consciously evaluate whether it's just gross, vs actually a problem. If it's just gross, I can consciously then decide to just get over it and have a nice swim (or whatever) regardless.
EDIT: Here's a couple links about what I'm trying to get at:
I'm not sure about other cultures, but in Japan they're pretty explicit about washing before entering an onsen. They even discourage putting your towel in the water, wearing a bathing suit, or submerging your head (as well as going when you have open cuts or sores). But, they also prefer mineral water to chlorine and it's generally fed from a spring or the water is changed every day.
I'm not a fan of overly cleanliness, but not doing these things means you have to add more chlorine. In addition to the aesthetic unpleasantness of chlorine and other chemicals, it's harder on the pool equipment and like another commenter said, it should require better ventilation that most pools currently have.
This reminds me of being grossed out by particular foods. Nowadays I take the approach that if people have eaten it for a long time, it's probably worth at least a try.
Perhaps helped out because my #1 example is chicken. Who doesn't like chicken?... me, as a kid, because it was often prepared terribly.
This is why I don't swim in pools or natural bodies of water any more.
I never thought about it as a kid, but as an adult I'm much more conscious of all of this really disgusting stuff in there and it just really grosses me out.
Most of the things you listed you have no control over, but you can totally get out of the pool to pee. I see zero reason to pee in a public pool unless you are a toddler and have no control over it.
I read an article recently (can't find it) that the worst offenders are pro swimmers. They drink loads of water during their multi-hour workouts, and don't take breaks to go pee...
Your comment appears to suggest you would find it not unpleasant to swim in a pool entirely filled with urine. Or do you acknowledge the fact that a lower concentration of bodily fluids in a swimming pool is more attractive as a swimmer?
I'm saying that singling out urine as the thing to be grossed out about in a pool, while understandable in a vacuum, is in reality one of the least problematic things in a pool, or in your daily environment in general.
So you shouldn't let the thought of potential urine in a pool stop you from enjoying pools, because if that's your threshold, you're going to have to drastically modify your daily habits to avoid things that are more dangerous/gross you encounter during every day tasks.
Everyone has their "this grosses me out" quirks. I just find it beneficial to do a reality check on them, to make sure that there's actually a reason to be grossed out by it, instead of letting an unfounded fear affect my decision making. And the reason I find this important is because I have plenty of those quirks myself.
>Your comment appears to suggest you would find it not unpleasant to swim in a pool entirely filled with urine.
I really hope someday I don't have to explicitly say things like "Just because I'm capable of swimming in a pool that might have some urine in it, doesn't mean I'm OK with swimming in a pool comprised solely of urine."
> I really hope someday I don't have to explicitly say things like "Just because I'm capable of swimming in a pool that might have some urine in it, doesn't mean I'm OK with swimming in a pool comprised solely of urine."
Just like I long for the day I don't have to explain to somebody that just because I know urine isn't dangerous to swim in doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer to swim in a pool with less urine. Yet here we are.
There's no avoiding other peoples/animals grossness, frankly whether your in a pool or just out and about.
Urine may be gross, but it's sterile, and at least for me, there are grosser things in pools.