DailyDirt: Dropping Off Kids At The Pool...?

Techdirt|Michael Ho

The US has hundreds of thousands of swimming pools -- roughly 309,000 public pools and 10.4 million residential pools. It's a nice way to cool down on a hot summer day, but it's also kinda gross if you think about sharing germs with all the people swimming in the pool. 

 At least there's no danger of getting attacked by sharks in a pool, but if you're paranoid about pool safety, check out a few of these links. (And perhaps try to stick with pools that use salt water chlorination.)

• Nearly one in five American adults have admitted to peeing in a swimming pool. Michael Phelps and other Olympians might not think it's a big deal, but urine and chlorine react to form some nasty toxic vapors (nitrogen trichloramine and cyanogen chloride) which can cause acute and chronic health problems for avid swimmers. [url]
• Cryptosporidium (aka Crypto) isn't killed by chlorine -- so don't drink pool water! This unpleasant germ can live for days in chlorinated water and cause diarrhea when ingested. Avoid kiddie pools, and also, just don't go swimming if you're already ill with diarrhea. Maybe someday public swimming pools will irradiate or add ozone to treat the water, but the CDC found that 1 in 8 swimming pools had public health violations in 2008 -- so maybe just stay out of the water. [url]
• If you've ever experienced red, stinging eyes after swimming, it wasn't too much chlorine in the pool -- it was a combination of urine and chlorine. So if you see a lot of people emerging from a pool with red eyes, just know that the CDC says it comes from chlorine in the pool water mixing with "pee, poop, sweat, and dirt from swimmers' bodies." [url]