Once again I'm hoping you all can find someone who can help with a problem that would cross a Rabbi's eyes.

A famous theater in NYC is planning a production in which people will wade through a 1500 gallon pool of "blood"  a few times a week for about 6 weeks. They've been doing some tests on a mixture of commercial stage blood diluted 1:10 with water.  Since stage blood is made with a lot of dyes, corn syrup, propylene glycol and methyl parabens, and since diluting it will cause the parabens to fail, and since they will be using this over many weeks at 90 o F and regularly introduce the living organisms from a bunch of feet, they thought they could used pool chemicals (mostly sodium dichloroisocyanurate) to keep it from functioning like a giant petrii dish. 

However, in their "tests" the amount of chlorine just doesn't get up to a safe level.  I'm not surprised since dyes are high nitrogen compounds, there are organic chemicals presents, etc.

I'm also concerned that the dyes are fading with the chlorine application and breaking down.  That means there may be small amounts of some really toxic stuff in there.

This is beyond me.  I can help with the dyes, but they need someone who can figure out more about the chemicals likely to be created in this soup and if we need to look in a completely different direction for a solution to this problem.

I'm taking names and suggestions from one and all. 

Monona Rossol, M.S., M.F.A.,
industrial hygienist
Arts, Crafts & Theater Safety, Inc.
and
Safety Officer,
United Scenic Artist's, Local USA829
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes (IATSE)
181 Thompson St., #23
New York NY 10012-2586     212/777-0062

artscraftstheatersafety.org