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Swimming Pool Tips & Safety (Part 2)
This is part 2 of our pool season handy tips and healthy safety information for your home swimming pools.
We are going to cover why you may get burning eyes and nose in your swimming pool and pool safety.
Burning Eyes & Nose:
If your swimming pool is giving you burning eyes and nose, dry and/or irritated skin then you have certainly got a problem with the chemicals in your swimming pools water.
It is more then likely to be one of the following factors causing this problem with your swimming pool:
- pH; your pH level is too low or too high,
- Calcium; too high level of calcium hardness
- Alkalinity; too low total alkalinity
This problem should go as long as you test your swimming pool water for these levels and correct them to the right levels for your pool.
Chlorine is known to cause eye irritation to some people even if it is set at the recommended levels for your swimming pool. You should consider installing a non-chlorine based pool sanitiser (you can find these at our Pool Cleaning & Chemicals section), this will enable you to efectively sanitize you swimming pool with lower chlorine levels.
Water Safety / Stopping Water Illnesses:
As your swimming pool will be an exposed body of water it will be subject to contamination. You may be think 'well its only my family and friends to be using the pool so its ok' but no thats not true, contamination can be carried by a number of different things to you pools water like the environment; rain, wind and so on it can also be carried into your water by the swimmers.
Over the past few years infections and infectious diseases from swimming pools have dramaticly increased this is partly due to some of the different strains of viruses and bacteria builting up resistance or emunity to chlorine that is used in our swimming pools to sanitise them. And some other bacterias and viruses are killed off slowly leaving time to infect some people. Because of this there is a very large demand for new and alternative chlorines and sanitisers which will kill the organisms that carry these disease more effectively and quicker.
It is not possible to stop all types of viruses and bacteria from entering swimming pools. This level of viruses, bacteria and contaminants entering a larger swimming pool with more users is a lot higher. If you want to keep you pool as contaminate free as you can we would advise that if your ill or recovering you should not swim until well again (this is up to you not a requirement). There are number of things that will break down your swimming pools chlorine a lot fast some of which are; high contamination presence, high swimmer load, and heat & UV rays from the sun. In the hope to try and prevent illness many if not most swimming pool owners/keepers etc will over do the levels of chlorine in the pools water.
But in doing this all they have done is created another problem of high chlorine levels which can also cause health problems, so you should avoid overuse of chlorine at all costs. Useing non chlorine or mineral water sanitisers should help to reduce your swimming pools chlorine levels by around 75% which will give your swimmers a much safer and healthier swimming pool and pool environment. These sanitisers will also destroy any viruses, bacteria and algae before they grow.
Thanks to the light of research on swimming pool water its been shown that you do not need to rely on just chlorine for your swimming pools protection. Non chlorine and other water treatments have been proven to supplement chlorine to create just as safe, if not safer pool water. Metals including sliver and copper are now also widely accepted anit viruse and anit bacterial agents. Companies are useing this knowledge in thier sanitiser products creating disinfectants that can and will destroy micro organisms which chlorine cannot.
We have just some of the diseases which can form in your pool water if infected:
- Amoebic Dysentery,
- Cholera,
- Cryptosporidiosis,
- Dermatitis,
- Dysentery,
- Gastroenteritis
- Giardiasis
- Hepatitis A,
- Salmonellosis,
- Shigellosis
- Typhoid
The following are some of many references of swimming pool water illnesses:
- Diarrhea - Since the mid 1980's Diarrhea has steadily rised due to new germa appearing and becoming resistant to chlorine used in swimming pools as disinfectant. (Michael Beach, CDC Medical Epidemiologist)
- Cryptosporidium parvum - To neutralise with chlorine it can take up to 4 days, even if you balance your pools chemicals and free chlorine levels (2.oppm) it can still cause severe illnesses passed within your swimming pool water. (CDC - Emerging Infectious Diseases)
- Chloramines (CI2 or CIO2) - These being in your pool water can cause eye & nose irritation, anemia and stomach pains, which is a result of chlorine. (EPA - Safe Water Regulations)
- Trihalomethanes - A by product of chlorine which has been observed to result in increading the risk cancer, central nervous system, kidney and liver problems. (EPA - Safe Water Regulations)
- Trihalomethanes - Can cause "Swimming asthma" which young children are especially prone to. This is due to breathing in chlorine by products such as Trihalomethanes. (Reuters Health; Toxicology Letters, 72)
More Information can be found in the Pool FAQ and FAQ sections and our Pool Buyers Guide.
