Here’s a bit of follow-up on yesterday’s post, “A doozy of a medical insurance horror tale“.
A commenter raised the question of how a poorly managed swimming pool could cause a life-threatening medical condition. I put the question to my friend, Chris. Here’s her brief and, for me, eye-opening answer.
When organics such as hair, sloughed off skin, scabs etc., hit the water, trichloramines are formed that sit in the top three inches of the air sitting on the surface of the water. When excess chlorine is put into the water this layer becomes even more laden with gasses. This is the air that a swimmer breaths as they are doing laps. In swimming facilities that are surrounded by wall, there is not enough air flow above the surface of the pool, which traps the gases.
When poisons such as trichloramines enter the air way, our body produces signals that inform the immune system that there is some sort of attack going on in the airway. The bodies response is to get as many of the cells responsible for combating and repairing the situation into play and inflammation is the result, in my case it was anaphylactic shock.
In professional and highly trained athletes this response is much faster. Many swimming training facilities no longer use chlorine to keep their pools clean due to it eliciting asthma in completely healthy persons. There have been numerous studies done on the effects of chlorine to swimmers, and the number one thing that occurs are breathing issues, and when this is coupled with an over-chlorinated pool this can trigger anaphylaxis.
The pool involved in my situation had been drained on July 4th, according to pool records, and refilled July 5th along with whatever chemical maintenance they administered to get it ready for us. I was told that only the pool pump administered the chemicals by the person in charge of the pool, only to later find this same person dumping crystals into the pool. The people who were in the pool with me reported seeing a layer of crystals as the bottom of the pool on the day we were in the pool, and were told by the instructor that this was excess chlorine fed by hand into the pool.
I just did a quick online search and turned up links to many studies, including one from the CDC, others from San Diego State University, European Respiratory Journal. Lots of studies in the context of “poisons” and asthma, and concern for kids as well as competitive swimmers who spend a lot of time in pools.
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Thanks! This is good to know.
I had no idea about swimming pools. I’ll be extra careful. Thanks for your thoughtful, thorough description. I believe all you said. Good luck!
It would seem to be the combination of ammonia and chlorine that she is claiming triggered the airway shutdown. She seems to say that it is organic matter from the human body that is decomposing that creates the ammonia. That is scary. They tell kids not to pee in the pool, and now that seems all too sensible.
People mix bleach and clorox when cleaning their clothes and their floors. Big mistake! People die from that all the time. Also, I think when cleaning out cat litter boxes, people use clorox, and I’ve been warned against using too much of that, that the cats get clorox on their paws and later lick their paws. But it could also be a mistake considering the ammonia in the cats’ urine.
There are swimming pools that use salt, but I think it is NaCl — table salt rather than ocean salt — and is more likely to sting one’s eyes than either ocean salt or chlorine. In the pool filtering equiment, the NaCl gets temporarily transformed into chlorine and kills germs, then gets transformed back into NaCl and pumped back into the pool. Sounds like a better system.
There is a lot of loose talk about how the big projects in Hawaii are unparalleled scams. “Rail is the biggest scam to hit Hawaii!” Actually, I think that there are bigger scams, namely Hawaii’s “healthcare” system and Hawaii’s “educational” system (including private schools). But people don’t know that, and are perhaps used to being exploited anyway (and want to move up within the system rather than question the system).
One of the few opportunities for Hawaii’s economy might be health tourism. But how can you have health tourism when the population lacks basic health, a knowledge of health and even a desire to be healthy? It’s a depressing thought.