Awww that pic reminds me of my cat who drowned. We didn't see it but think she bent over to drink pool water and her legs gave out as she was kind of an old cat and you know the rest :(

Oops, I don't remember taking many pre-swimming showers as a kid.

And when a pool smells like it has too much chlorine, that usually means just the opposite. The free (good) chlorine is gone and the combined (bad) chlorine is really high.

And god help you if you get into one of those giant germ cauldrons known as whirlpools.

Hence why I do not par-take in swimming at the local recreational pool. That picture with the cat.. poor thing is about to get the swine flu. :P

Forgot to add, if the pool has too many people in it for your liking, toss in an unwrapped Baby Ruth, ala Caddyshack.

"recreational water illnesses (RWIs) -have been on the rise over the last couple of decades"

That information isn't very valuable. There are more pools in the US than a couple of decades ago, so of course there are going to be more RWIs. I bet there are a proportionate number of injuries, accidents, drownings, etc.

A more valuable statistic would be the number of RWIs per pool, or the number of pool hours per RWI. I'd be willing to bet those numbers are not materially different than they were before, and that they might have even gone down due to better filtration equipment and methods on newer pools.

@thegirls:

We had showers at the local pool, but you'd just sort of spend a few seconds under the spray, a token effort.

@thegirls:

Does anyone pre-shower at home? That's wastefull since we all shower after we get out.

Does cleaning, chlorinating, and balancing the pool counter act not doing this?

@Judge_Smails:or you could do what my cousins kid did once and just shit in the pool. I've never been back in that pool.

I won't put more than my feet into a public swimming pool. They're used as toilets (intentionally or not - I've been at more than a few pools that had to be evacuated due to poop accidents).

If 100 people were handed a glass of swimming pool water from the middle of a hot day and told what was in it - both chemical and 'organic' - but not that it came from a pool, I wonder how many would be willing to take a swallow of it?

@Canino:
All I know is the peeing isn't as bad as a kid pooing in the pool.

My girlfriend's nephew pooed in his shorts last summer and didn't tell anyone. We found the diaperesque proof later.

My prize?

A leg rash for a month that literally ate away at my calfs. A doctor told me I might as well had bathed in infected cowshit and with medicine took about 2 more weeks to clear.

Don't jump, kitty, don't jump!

Kitteh: "To hell with mice, now I hunt fish!"

[Caption]: Kitty, overwhelmed by the blues, prepares to jump

I've found that pools can be quickly cleaned by grabbing the slowest children standing poolside then dunking them until the water's all gone.

If your city (or university) has a decent Olympic or half-Olympic sized pool with a good swimming program, I've found the water quality is excellent.
The swimmers know how to get wet, while the staff knows how to treat the pool.

The suburban wading-pool type ones, OTOH...

I'm not saying it's acceptable practice, but I don't see how urine, while gross, would contribute to "RWI".

Unless you've got a raging bladder infection, urine is sterile.

i used to lifeguard at a semi-public pool. let me tell you something: sadly, urinating in the pool isn't the worst thing that can happen. at least once a month we had to shock the pool b/c someone defecated or threw up in it (& only rarely was that a child). we had an old man's colostomy bag bust open once - that was fun.

but the worst? sex acts. that's right. open swim, 50-100 people in the pool & some real twisted folks start going at it in the corner of the deep end. WHISTLE "everybody out; pools closed. you can thank these two lovebirds right. over. HERE!"

i caught about 1/2 dozen couples trying to pull that off which always left me wondering: how many didn't i catch?

@Shoelace: I would hope it would be zero, the same number of people that would be willing to swallow it out of the actual pool. I don't get your point.

@Trai_Dep: if i was behind that kitteh, he so would've gotten a nudge from my boot.

simply for the wealth of photographic material, of course! ;)

@PSN: kingpsyz: You shower before (especially at the Y) to get all the stink and sweat and bad bad things OFF of you.
It's the same reason you should WIPE OFF the gym equipment when you are done 'not sweating' on it. I have my OWN germs, thank you very much.

My sister contracted MRSA after an otherwise relaxing jaunt in a hot tub.

Gross.

The article doesn't mention it, but I think people whom also have expreienced Restless Leg Syndrome and fibromyalgia are particularly at risk for RWIs.

I hope a pharmaceutical company comes up with a drug that targets RWIs.

@PSN: kingpsyz: The showering was always done after you got out over here as well. I don't think anyone showered before going in the pool.

And to think that when I was a kid I drank that pool water not knowing any better, either accidently or sometimes I would just drink it when I was thirsty. Never got sick from going in a pool.

Yeeks. Makes me glad I spent my Dubya check on a backyard aboveground pool. Which is going up this weekend, yeah! ;)

Luckily my kitteh is scared of it and won't go near it.

@Trai_Dep: Silly kitty, fishings for bears.

@hedonia: People don't go out of their way to swallow pool water but many people inadvertently do and don't think twice about it.

I'll rephrase my question to offer each of the 100 people money to take a swallow from the glass and see how much it ends up costing.

@Outrun1986:

I don't remember if pre-swim showers were enforced for our 2nd & 3rd grade swimming lessons. However, at age 8 or 9, kids who bathed daily were unlikely to be all that sweaty or slimy. That came with puberty.

Plenty of peeing happened in that pool, however.

There's a reason why Cartman didn't want to go swimming...

@Judge_Smails:

I demure every time friends or family invite me into a hot tub. Ick.

@PSN: kingpsyz: You'd probably be better off with infected cowshit, as infected human shit is going to have more humanophagic nasties.

@doctor_cos:
I can see that at a public pool, but at a home pool no way

@BustedFlush: Not quite. Urine is sterile in the bladder, if you're healthy. It picks up exciting things upon departure and is found quite tasty by microbes outside of the body. And, of course, plenty of people do have kidney and urinary tract infections.

@Outrun1986: Except it's hard to know, because it's not like pool-borne illness comes with a little ID tag. If you developed an earache, or stuffy/runny nose, or diarrhea as a kid during the season you were swimming, it could well have been from the pool.

My local pool switched to salt water for some reason, and now I feel even worse about swimming in it.

@PSN: kingpsyz: The pre-shower is to rinse off sand or dirt particles, and remove body oils and hair or makeup products, which are very hard to remove with standard pool cleaning chemicals. It's not really about bacteria.

Urine is sterile.

@Trai_Dep: hate to break it to you, but swimmers pee in the pool more than little kids do - they're just less likely to admit it

I live in upstate NY too! Yay!

Ok, that's all I have.

I was a lifeguard for a few years - over the summer, it was surprising when we went for more than a week without a "fecal incident." Usually, it was more like two or three. About 75% of incidents were from kids.

Urine's the least of concerns.

"We don't swim in your toilet, please don't pee in our pool."

I used to lifeguard in the early 90's at public/high school pools during the school year and a private membership pool in the summer. Never once did I ever hear about someone getting sick from the water. I agree with the post from 'HiPwr', recreational water illnesses is right up there with restless leg syndrome. You probably have the same chance of getting sick from super markets, public transportation and any other location with multiple people gathering.

@unpolloloco: Pee's okay in those sized pools, with good maintenance.
(gulp) I hope.

@floraposte:

Exciting things that wouldn't be on any other part of your body?

Much as I try I just can't get worked up over this. I've swum in public pools all my life. I don't put covers on the toilet seat at work. I don't put my bologna sandwich in the fridge there either. Double-dippers don't freak me out. I often taste the food I make for my family with the same spoon I stir with.

I'm just a menace to society I guess, but I'm never sick.

They really are doing this the wrong way.

The signs need to be, "Nobody else pees in the pool, do you really want to be the only one?"

Or, do like the lifeguard team I used to work on did at public pools, "Hey, kids, you know we have Urine-Indicator Dye in that pool? Yah, it turns your legs purple and doesn't go away for a week. Oh yah, and if your legs are purple when you get out then we fine you $100!" All that despite: [en.wikipedia.org] . The fun thing about it was when we put a shill in the pool from time to time who had painted his/her legs ahead of time ;). Then making a big deal out of it when they get out of the pool and telling them to never come back. Parents loved it, kids got a kick out of it, and we know for a fact we probably had more pee in that pool as a result than we would have otherwise, but darnit, it was fun!

@unpolloloco: Two or three a day .. the worst were the adults who had sex while the woman was on her period ... and you saw a nice lil' bloom of blood in the pool. Gah, I am glad I quit that job.

@Trai_Dep:
If I were there, the cat would have wound up plopped into the water, followed by my gleeful laughter.

This article seems dubious to me. For example: "behaviors that contribute to an unhealthy pool. Notably, one in five pee in the pool"

As Tyler Durden once said... Urine is sterile. You can drink it.

Sure peeing in the pool is a little disgusting and certainly rude, but it's not "unhealthy".

@Shoelace: Your glass of water will not have an appreciable free chlorine residual or be constantly filtered through a sand or DE system or, in some cases, a UV filter (in complement to the sand/DE).

While I would agree that any a) outdoor pool seasonal pool or b) pool in a densely populated urban area or a rural area, an indoor suburban pool will generally be run by staff who have more reason to care about their job.

@Canino: Well, it's given with the context of the percentage of Americans who don't use hygienic methods or pee in the pool, so the fact that RWI's are increasing is mostly a side point, not the main one. It's a symptom of unhygienic behavior.