FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Dave Klena said he has kept a log of every time he added chemicals to his swimming pool in Fort Lauderdale.
"These are the test records for our swimming pool since we installed the pool in 1987," he said. "You have to take the water samples down to the pool store. They test the water. They tell you all the chemicals you need. It's usually acid, salt, chemicals, pH up on and on."
Then Klena bought a Go Chemless Bio Sanitizer.
"[It] goes right between the pump and the filter," he said.
The sanitizer adds copper and silver ions into the water -- targeting algae, bacteria, viruses, and mold -- instead of chlorine.
"It doesn't even feel like pool water," said Klena. "It just feels like -- I can't explain it -- like bottled water almost. It doesn't smell. There's almost no flavor to it. It's almost like what you'd call perfect."
"Chlorine is a very, very effective killer," said Michael Self, founder of Go Chemless.
Self said chlorine isn't good for the skin or safe to ingest while swimming.
"It's been linked to things like bladder cancer, rectal [cancer], testicular cancer, birth defects," he said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports pool chemical accidents send thousands of people to the hospital each year.
Self said salt water pools aren't any better.
"These salt water pools use what are called chlorinators or chlorine generators to make high levels of chlorine," he said.
"Pool chlorine, in very dilute situations, is not really hurting you at all unless you're breathing the chlorine gas in a very strong situation," said Bill Louda, an environmental chemist at Florida Atlantic University.
Louda said the Go Chemless Bio Sanitizer makes sense.
"This, in combination with much lower chlorine, seems to be a very, very good way of treating a swimming pool if one of your goals is to lower the amount of chlorine in a swimming pool," he said.
"You know, sometimes the simplest things in life are the best," said Klena, "and this is a simple system. Actually, it's hard to talk about because it just works."
The Go Chemless pool sanitizer costs $1,300. The rods must be replaced every 18 months for an additional $100.
Click here to find a store near you that carries the Go Chemless Bio Saniztizer.