PRPG:
Swimming Pool

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go in the Water…

August 6, 2015

…it never really was. And we’re talking about swimming pools. They’re really, really gross.

Swimming PoolPee Gets in Your Eyes 

Have your eyes ever burned and stung after an afternoon spent swimming in the city pool? You probably have, and you probably attributed it to sensitivity to the chlorine in the water. According to the a new study by the Centers for Disease Control (with help from the Water Quality and Health Council), that’s a big misconception. The chlorine mixtures used in swimming pools are actually protecting you from reactions like burning eyes. Chlorine seeks out and binds with pollutants in pools, creating a new compound of chemical irritants. And it’s that which stings your eyes—it’s the chlorine clinging to the all of the urine and sweat other people left behind in the pool. In other words, if you get out of a pool and your eyes are burning, somebody peed in there. The CDC also noted that the chemicals municipal pools use to protect against urine don’t really work—there isn’t really a dye that turns the water green around a rouge pee-er. It’s just meant to scare people so they don’t use a public pool as their personal toilet.

Just Like Parasite

The CDC is apparently intent on ruining summer for everyone. According to data from 2012 that the agency just finished analyzing, we’re in the middle of a pool-based outbreak of “Crypto,” or Cryptosporidium, a water-borne parasite that’s resistant to the chlorine used in pools that usually kills a lot of other germs. It can live in chlorinated water for up to 10 days, and can stay in a human body for as long as five weeks. The CDC says that pool-based Crypto has been responsible for as much as half of all water-borne disease cases over the last few years.