Even when disinfected, dangers can still exist.
Swimming season is just around the corner. With the warmer weather come fantastic dayss at the beach and time spent lounging in the pool. While we often think of pools and hot tubs as places that are kept clean with large doses of chlorine in order to prevent us from falling sick, research shows we may want to revisit this line of thinking.
According to a study done by researchers at the American Chemical Society, even when disinfected, swimming facilities can potentially be home to harmful elements. These include chemical compounds that could damage your health if exposed over a long period of time.
What health risks are in your pool or hot tub?
Pool or hot tub water that isn’t treated with chlorine and other disinfecting solutions can be a dangerous environment in which viruses, bacteria, and parasites can grow. This can lead to threatening infections of bacteria from E coli, salmonella contamination, as well as microorganisms like Giardia and Cryptosporidium parvum. These can cause severe and even life threatening infections in people.
You can also contract something called Legionnaires’ disease, which is a type of pneumonia. This can be caught by inhaling water that is contaminated with Legionella bacteria when pools or hot tubs haven’t been disinfected and cleaned properly. You don’t want to leave your pool water untreated!
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This being said, exposure to too many pool and hot tub treatment chemicals could also be harmful to your health. The research mentioned above relates to this. Scientists have found that when disinfectants react with sweat and urine that can be found in swimming pools, something called Disinfection byproducts can result.
These byproducts have been found to cause genetic damage to cells when in lab studies. In fact, some research has found elevated levels of bladder cancer and respiratory problems in people who swim a lot in pools or who work around them. Disinfection byproducts were also found to cause pool and hot water to become much more mutagenic than regular tap water. The more use of water disinfection products there is, the more mutagenic the water can become.
How can you best keep your pool clean?
It’s imperative that you treat your pool and hot tub water with disinfecting solutions. Without them, someone will certainly fall sick and it could be a serious situation. In order to reduce the presence of disinfection byproduct compounds, however, experts advise you change your water frequently to rinse them away and keep them from accumulating over time.
In addition, it’s important to encourage swimmers to rinse off thoroughly before entering the pool and to avoid peeing in the pool as well. Gross, but it needed to be said. (Apparently, even Michael Phelps has admitted to seeing nothing wrong with peeing in the very water in which he practices. He’s wrong. There is).
For more information on the study mentioned, click here.
photo credits: StacieStauffSmith Photos/Shutterstock.com
