In 2009, a global cabal of artists, designers, and scientists called the International Colour Association decided to create a day to honour—er, "honor"—color in all its forms. International Colour Day is now celebrated every March 21, since that's the spring equinox, the day when light and darkness are in perfect balance. All month, we're going to have Jeopardy!'s Ken Jennings with us, debunking a full spectrum of chromatic claptrap. Your trivia knowledge will soon be in the pink.
The Debunker: Is There a Chemical That Makes Pool Water + Pee Turn Blue?
Odds are, you do it too. According to a 2015 poll by the Internet media company Travelzoo, fully 64 percent of Americans admit to peeing in the swimming pool rather than getting out and walking to the restroom like civilized people. With all these people turning the piscine into a total piss scene, you'd think someone would have wondered by now: where are the telltale plumes of dark blue, from the urine indicator in the water? We've seen this stuff at work in movies like Grown-Ups and Take This Waltz, right? Everyone knows public pools have a secret chemical that turns a different color in the presence of pee.
The Water Quality and Health Council recently found that almost half of all respondents believed the blue-pee propaganda, making it "the most common pool myth of all time." In fact, there is no such chemical. The composition of human urine varies so widely that there's no way to fine-tune an indicator to work in swimming pool water, which even in best-case conditions is full of chemically similar impurities like sweat and dirt. Do you understand what I'm saying here? This was an urban legend cooked up by parents and lifeguards to keep gross kids from warming up the YMCA pool! Grown-Ups is a science fiction movie, or maybe takes place in an alternate universe.
There is a reliable way to test for the presence of urine in a swimming pool, however. You know when your eyes sting and turn red? Your mom probably used to tell you that was chlorine, but Michele Hlavsa of the CDC's Healthy Swimming Program begs to differ. "Peeing in a pool depletes chlorine and actually produces an irritant that makes people's eyes turn red," she says. Chlorine by itself is easy on the eyes, but when it reacts with the nitrogen-containing compounds in urine, that's when your eyes start to sting. So there's good reason to keep the pool an "ool" (no 'p' in it) even if science has yet to catch up with Kevin James movies.
Quick Quiz: What 1950 movie classic is narrated by a man floating dead in a Los Angeles swimming pool?
Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.