Careful virus (common cold) and bacteria (salmonella) are two different critters- they both cause illness but you cant use one as a substitute for the other.
Here's interesting stuff about chlorine, like pool water and drinking water and some of the different compounds used at different strengths.
Purification and disinfection
Chlorine is an important chemical for water purification (such as water treatment plants), in disinfectants, and in bleach. Chlorine in water is more than three times more effective as a disinfectant against Escherichia coli than an equivalent concentration of bromine, and is more than six times more effective than an equivalent concentration of iodine.[31]
Chlorine is usually used (in the form of hypochlorous acid) to kill bacteria and other microbes in drinking water supplies and public swimming pools. In most private swimming pools chlorine itself is not used, but rather sodium hypochlorite, formed from chlorine and sodium hydroxide, or solid tablets of chlorinated isocyanurates. Even small water supplies are now routinely chlorinated.[3] (See also chlorination)
It is often impractical to store and use poisonous chlorine gas for water treatment, so alternative methods of adding chlorine are used. These include hypochlorite solutions, which gradually release chlorine into the water, and compounds like sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione (dihydrate or anhydrous), sometimes referred to as "dichlor", and trichloro-s-triazinetrione, sometimes referred to as "trichlor". These compounds are stable while solid and may be used in powdered, granular, or tablet form. When added in small amounts to pool water or industrial water systems, the chlorine atoms hydrolyze from the rest of the molecule forming hypochlorous acid (HOCl) which acts as a general biocide killing germs, micro-organisms, algae, and so on.
Antimicrobial efficacy
The broad-spectrum effectiveness of bleach, for example sodium hypochlorite, owes to the nature of the chemical reactivity of the bleach with the microbes. Rather than act in an inhibitory or specific toxic fashion in the manner of antibiotics, the reaction with the microbial cells quickly and irreversibly denatures, and often destroys the pathogen. Specifically, with sodium hypochlorite it is found that:
* the bleach attacks proteins in bacteria, causing them to clump up much like an egg that has been boiled,
* when exposed to bleach, the heat shock protein of bacteria become active in an attempt to protect other proteins in the bacteria from losing their chemical structure, forming clumps that would eventually die off, and
* the human immune system produces hypochlorous acid in response to infection to kill bacterial invaders
* the lipid membrane of the bacteria is destroyed, popped like a balloon if you would, as a result of the bleach being very basic.
As noted, the range of micro-organisms effectively killed by bleach, and in particular sodium hypochlorite, is extensive, making it extremely versatile.
blah- I was looking for what temperatures that chlorine (food processing type sodium hypochlorite ) was inactivated at. but didn't find it in my lazy fog.
Oh and I have well water form the FL aquifer... so no chlorine/fluoride for me.
