Yes, You Have a Lot of Rubbish in Your Pool. Do Not Worry.
You’ve probably heard that your eyes don’t turn red from chlorine when you swim, but from chlorine binding to other people’s urine . I look at it differently: there will always be nasty things in the pools. This is why we add chlorine to them. Your red eyes mean chlorine is working .
I will join the Centers for Disease Control and plead with you not to write to the pool , but a few conscious swimmers will not solve the problem. These irritating chloramines result from chlorine binding to almost everything, including sweat and personal care products. Showering before entering the pool partially relieves this, but if people in the pool exercise, swim or do water aerobics , they still sweat.
Here’s another piece of news that shocks non-parents: all those swim diapers kids wear? They don’t do anything to keep urine from getting into the pool . Their job is to keep number two until Mom or Dad gets to the locker room to change diapers. The urine comes out.
Is that enough to get you out of the pool and head to the beach? It is a pity that natural reservoirs are also full of coarse matter – not only people, but also wild animals living in this area. (What did you think the fish came out to play fish pots with a lid?)
So let’s stop worrying about body fluids that cannot be completely avoided and focus on what can actually make you sick – mainly germs like Cryptosporidium , which are transmitted through diarrhea.
There are a few things you can do to keep Crypto and his buddies from getting sick: keep yourself and your kids out of the water, if you or they have diarrhea, be vigilant about the chemistry of the water in any pool you serve, and just in case, never swallow the water you are swimming in. Microbes are a small but real risk. Should you go swimming? For most of us, yes.
Photo by peasap .
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