Olin Chlor Alkali Products

Chlorine In Your Life

What is Chlorine? | It's Natural | It's Useful
Chlorine & Health

Did you know that chlorine is one of just 20 or so elements that make up all living things? Or that chlorine and chlorine-related chemicals as disinfectants and pharmaceuticals have saved more lives than any other chemical in the history of human kind? Get to know chlorine-one of the most useful and versatile chemical substances on Earth.

What is chlorine?

Of the 112 elements that make up the world we live in, 99 percent of the Earth's crust, atmosphere and oceans are comprised of just 12 elements by weight. They are oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium, hydrogen, phosphorous, carbon, and chlorine. In fact, chlorine accounts for more than two percent by weight of all seawater alone.

Chlorine has an unusual ability to bind to other elements and compounds to form new matter. Chlorine's outer shell is missing one electron, which makes it highly attractive to other atoms and electrons. This is why chlorine is so useful in producing many man-made products, from thousands of consumer goods to pharmaceuticals and PVC pipes.

It's Natural

Chlorine is part of our natural ecosystem. From inorganic forms such as salt to numerous organic forms, there are more than 1,500 chlorine compounds produced naturally. Volcanoes, forest fires, brush fires and other sources of natural combustion produce large quantities of organic chlorine compounds, including dioxins, chloromethane and others. Sponges, corals, sea slugs, jellyfish, seaweeds, and many other marine creatures also produce chlorine compounds. And so do a wide variety of plants, seeds, trees, insects, amphibians, mammals, algae, fungi, mushrooms, and some fruit and vegetables.

For many of these organisms, plants and animals, organic chlorine compounds (or organochlorines) are critical to survival, playing important roles in metabolism, chemical defense systems, growth, and even sex. A frog in Ecuador, for example, secretes a chlorinated alkaloid 500 times more powerful than morphine as a painkiller.

Humans, like many mammals, produce hypochlorite to fight infection and hydrochloric acid for proper digestion. We also use chloride ions for proper muscle and nerve function. And sodium chloride (or salt), which is essential to our diets, is found in our blood, sweat and tears.

A World of Uses

Of the approximately 14 million tons of chlorine produced in the U.S. every year, the greatest volume, approximately 90 percent, is used the production of other important chemicals-everything from pharmaceuticals to disinfectants. In fact, chlorine is used in about half of all commercial chemistry.

Did you know--

Chlorine is responsible for saving consumers nearly $90 billion a year?
Chlorine is used in the purification process for 98% of all drinking water?
Chlorine is involved in the manufacture of nearly 85% of all pharmaceuticals?
Chlorine plays a role in 95% of all crop protection efforts?
That the USDA has estimated that, without chlorine, America's annual food output would decrease by some 40%?

Chlorine Protects Your Health

In 1908, Jersey City, N.J., began to use chlorine on a large scale to treat its water. Soon after, other major cities around the country began to purify water with chlorine. After chlorine's introduction into public water supplies, deaths from typhoid in the United States dropped dramatically from 25,000 in 1900 to less than 20 in 1960. Today, chlorine is used in 98% of all water systems that disinfect, and incidences of diseases such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery are practically unheard of.

The only water disinfection method that cleans and protects all the way to the tap, chlorination is credited with increasing Americans' life expectancy by more than 50 percent. Chlorine compounds provide disinfection for swimming pools and Jacuzzis, keeping our recreational waters free of, and us safe from, infectious microorganisms.

Chlorine is also integral to the manufacture of 85 percent of all pharmaceuticals, including drugs that treat heart disease, hypertension, ulcers arthritis, pneumonia, allergies and symptoms of the common cold.