Ask The Pool Guy
From the Wikipedia entry for cyanuric acid
Cyanuric acid is used as a stabilizer in recreational water treatment to minimize the decomposition of hypochlorous acid by light in outdoor swimming pools and hot tubs.
Chlorinated derivatives of cyanuric acid, such as trichloro-s-triazinetrione and sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione, are used as algacides or microbiocides in swimming pool water and large scale water systems in industry.
Testing for cyanuric acid concentration is commonly done with a turbidometric test, which uses a reagent, melamine, to precipitate the cyanuric acid. The relative turbidity of the reacted sample quantifies the CYA concentration. Referenced in 1957. Merck Turbidity Test
This test works because melamine combines with the cyanuric acid in the water to form a fine, insoluble, white precipitate that causes the water to cloud in proportion to the amount of cyanuric acid in it.
If you have a swimming pool or hot tub and your pet drinks from it, it will be ingesting cyanuric acid. Notice that it is also used in industrial water systems, like pet food factories, perhaps?
Remember the chicken and pork that was tainted? Do you swim in a pool? What about the water supply in the processing plant?
2 comments
That sounds likely to me. And I’m afraid that the concentration of the other kind of CYA is liable to be pretty high in the industries and bureaucracies dealing with this.
As you know, particularly at the moment, a) cats’ reproductive “strategy” is having large numbers of offspring, not all of whom survive, and b) cats will drink from just about anything; they’re just not all that picky.
This doesn’t threaten the whole species at all, but if a human has individual cats s/he cares a great deal for, s/he has to watch where they drink. Stella closes toilet lids at her place, and I rinse the bathroom sink thoroughly after using that awful chemical my dentist makes me use on my teeth. Harmful to cats? I don’t know, and I don’t intend to find out the hard way.
God, I hope they nail this problem down soon.
The problem is that neither is the problem, it takes both, and both are in the environment. Who knows what they use to condition water in China, if anything. This may not be a problem for them.
This would explain why CYA isn’t in all of the samples, some factories may not use it in their water supply. The ferals drink either rain water, water from the air conditioner [I have a pan to collect it for them], or irrigation water. It’s the indoor cats that drink treated water.