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Record W4410835804 · doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2025.138739

Disinfection by-products in indoor swimming pools: A critical review to prioritize commonly occurring species and influencing factors

2025· review· en· W4410835804 on OpenAlexafffund
Ghulam Hussain, Haroon R. Mian, Kasun Hewage, Andrea J. MacNeill, Rehan Sadiq

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Hazardous Materials · 2025
Typereview
Languageen
FieldEnvironmental Science
TopicWater Treatment and Disinfection
Canadian institutionsOkanagan University CollegeUniversity of British Columbia, Okanagan CampusUniversity of British Columbia
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
KeywordsEnvironmental scienceEnvironmental planningEnvironmental engineeringWaste managementEngineering

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Despite the reported occurrence of several disinfection by-products (DBPs) in swimming pools, it is challenging to identify important DBP species due to strewn and conflicting information about their occurrence and importance in the literature. There is a need to provide clear direction and decisive information to support regulators' and pool facilities' efforts to control DBPs. In this review, alongside providing detailed occurrence data, we have developed a novel prioritization approach to classify DBPs as Tier-1 (critical priority), Tier-2 (medium priority), and Tier-3 (low-priority) DBPs in chlorinated indoor swimming pools (ISPs). After compiling an exhaustive database of published literature on chlorinated ISPs, DBP species were evaluated on a defined scoring system based on their occurrence (concentration levels and reported frequency) and toxicity. The normalized aggregated scores from these criteria were used to prioritize the DBPs. The DBPs identified as Tier-1 species with the highest occurrence and potential toxicity include Trichloromethane (TCM), Trichloroacetic acid (TCAA), and Dichloroacetic acid (DCAA). Respectively, ten DBP species were identified in Tier-2 and fifteen in Tier-3. Implications of the prioritization results for regulatory agencies, pool facilities, and researchers have been provided. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of the available studies, that described the correlation of water quality and pool operational factors with Tier-1 DBPs, was carried out. The identified critical factors include the number of swimmers, free residual chlorine, disinfection methods, total organic carbon (TOC), and temperature. These factors can be used to control the formation of DBPs and reduce the associated risk, especially for Tier-1 species.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.004
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Systematic review · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.007
Threshold uncertainty score0.014

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.004
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0020.002
Bibliometrics0.0070.006
Science and technology studies0.0000.001
Scholarly communication0.0020.002
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.033
GPT teacher head0.313
Teacher spread0.280 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSystematic review
Domainnot available
GenreReview

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations8
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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