Why Is There a Chlorine Shortage Right Now?
Blame two factors for the chlorine shortage, says CNBC. One, unsurprisingly, is COVID-19: Last summer, sales for swimming pools skyrocketed as people all over the planet stayed home during the pandemic, leading to an increased demand for prepared chlorine products.
But the other cause is more surprising: In August 2020, a chlorine plant just outside Lake Charles, Louisiana responsible for making a bulk of the U.S.’s chlorine tablets burned down in the wake of Hurricane Laura, putting a huge dent in the production of chlorine tablets. Related Story
The BioLab facility will reopen in 2022, but in the meantime, its absence leaves just two domestic manufacturers of chlorine tablets: Occidental Petroleum and Clearon Corp. Even if both manufacturers increase production, they’d have to ramp up roughly 50 percent each to fill in the gap during the chlorine shortage.
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After British scientist Sims Woodhead used calcium chlorine to disinfect drinking water during a 1897 typhoid outbreak, experts realized it could be used as an effective cleaning agent in pools, too.
The first attempt to sterilize a pool using chlorine was at Brown University in 1910, when the 70,000-gallon Colgate Hoyt Pool was chlorinated.
Experts are calling this the worst chlorine shortage in history, with prices for a 50lb bucket jumping nearly doubling to $140 in some places. Some suppliers have started limiting how much chlorine customers can buy
When chlorine is added to water, it forms a weak acid, called hypochlorous acid, that knocks out bacteria like salmonella and E. coli, as well as germs that cause diarrhea, swimmer s ear and other ailments.
It s been a concern for us, said Cody Saliture, owner of Texas Pool Professionals, which has been in business for 17 years.
The Rockwall, Texas-based company services 200 clients weekly, and Saliture said he recently began to stockpile chlorine tablets. He s also been looking for different chemicals to keep pools sanitized and his customers happy. We re looking for anything that we can get that we don t have here in North Texas, Saliture said. We ve been to about six states and 15 cities [for supplies].
The chlorine shortage is widespread and it will likely worsen driving chlorine prices even higher as homeowners start to prep swimming pools for the season. CNBC spoke to pool industry insiders in multiple states including Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Texas about the tight supplies, which are expected to blindside pool owners, who are largely unaware of the problem.