strangemonad elsewhere here posted a link to a video evaluating the question of how much pee there is in pools, using the excretion of an artificial sweetener - which is only in urine and not, like urea, also in sweat - as the indicator.
The presenter is also dubious about the origin of the smell, and thinks that it comes from the chlorine, not the trichloramine product of chlorine interacting with urea. So he tests it out by mixing pool chlorine into two buckets, putting urine in one of them, covering for a few days, and smelling.
That experiment is run starting at https://youtu.be/S32y9aYEzzo?t=284 . The chlorinated water, even at 4x concentration, "smells just like water." While the one where urine was added "smells like a pool."
The relevant text from in the ACS link "ACE, used in prepackaged foods,(18, 29, 30) is not metabolized by humans; it is completely absorbed and excreted exclusively in the urine,(29, 31)"
[29] Voltz, M.; Christ, O.; Eckert, H. G.; Herok, J.; Kellner, H.-M.; Rupp, W. Kinetics and biotransformation of acesulfame K. In Acesulfame-K; Mayer, D. G.; Kemper, F. H., Eds.; Marcel Dekker: New York, 1991; pp 7– 26.
[31] Renwick, A. G. The metabolism of intense sweeteners Xenobiotica 1986, 16, 1057– 71 DOI: 10.3109/00498258609038983
Any idea what makes tap water smell like a pool? It evaporates out pretty quickly (a day or so in a normal pitcher), whatever the cause, and I've always assumed it was chlorine since it smells like a tiny waft of bleach.
That's probably less of an issue for water straight from the tap than a pool / a bucket of water that was peed into. Unless there's more urea in tap water than I expect.
The presenter is also dubious about the origin of the smell, and thinks that it comes from the chlorine, not the trichloramine product of chlorine interacting with urea. So he tests it out by mixing pool chlorine into two buckets, putting urine in one of them, covering for a few days, and smelling.
That experiment is run starting at https://youtu.be/S32y9aYEzzo?t=284 . The chlorinated water, even at 4x concentration, "smells just like water." While the one where urine was added "smells like a pool."