Public swimming pools are enjoyed across the country by people of all ages. Different states have different laws regarding pool cleanliness and safety. Before you get into a public swimming pool, ask the place of business who is responsible for maintaining the pool, if there's any documentation of when the swimming pool was last inspected and what treatments were used during the inspections.
Types
When you think of a public swimming pool, your idea may vary from another person's. Public swimming pools are found at hotels, motels, swimming parks, fitness gyms and high schools and can also include semi-public pools, such as a community swimming pool designed for the use of residents within a particular subdivision. Public swimming pools can also include hot tubs, wading pools, spas and recreational water fountains used for play.
Function
Public water testing, as outlined by the World Health Organization, includes the standard of the water in the swimming pool, such as microorganism growth, bacterial growth and algae growth. Health officials use a standardized form to evaluate public swimming pools. In addition, other safety measures are monitored, such as drowning prevention and control, risk management and the prevention and control of water-related wounds and injuries.
Significance
When health officials sample the water for testing purposes, there are two types of grading for each component on the standardized form---critical and noncritical. Critical items are violations that are related to water contamination, which could lead to illness, waterborne disease transmission and environmental degradation. When grading a public swimming pool for any critical violations, the inspector is looking for items such as disinfection, hot and cold water distribution, pool pumps and filters as well as record keeping and on-site testing performed by the employees or owners of the public swimming pool. Noncritical violations are less serious and do not pose a potential threat to your safety.
Warning
While companies strive to maintain a safe, clean pool, the pools can still become contaminated through no fault of the employees or owners maintaining the swimming pool. Fecal contamination poses a serious threat to public swimmers, as fecal contamination can cause conjunctivitis, pharyngitis and other serious diseases. Should another swimmer enter the water with an infected cut, the infection can pose a serious health risk to you depending upon the type of infection, such as adenovirus, which can lead to ocular infections, respiratory infections and in certain instances, gastroenteritis in children.
Considerations
A study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control in 2002 revealed startling information. The CDC obtained data from public swimming pool inspections and analyzed all the data. A total of 22,131 swimming pool inspections were analyzed, and out of the 22,131 inspections, 21,561 had violations of pool codes. Remember, violations are critical items. Most of the violations were from hotel and motel swimming pools. Out of the original 22,131 inspections, 8.3 percent resulted in immediate closure of the swimming pools. This does not mean that hotel and motel swimming pools should be avoided, but use extreme caution before entering them.
References
- World Health Organization: Guidelines for Safe Recreational Water Environments
- US National Library of Medicine: Waterborne diseases prevention: Evaluation of inspection scoring system for water sites according to water microbiological tests during the Athens 2004 pre-Olympic and Olympic period
- Who.int: Microbial Hazards
- Center for Disease Control: Surveillance Data from Swimming Pool Inspections --- Selected States and Counties, United States, May--September 2002
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