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Home › Articles › General Health › Swim Safely!

Swim Safely!

Protect Your Children from Waterborne Illnesses

By Kathleen Meister

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When you take your toddler to a swimming pool, you know that you're going have to stay alert at every moment to be sure that she's safe in the water. You might not realize, though, that there's another hazard that you should also keep in mind: the possibility that your child might get sick from germs in the pool water.

Wanda Stephens of Grayson, Ga., knows just how dangerous germs in pool water can be. In June 1996, her 4-year-old daughter spent two weeks fighting for her life when she developed hemolytic-uremic syndrome caused by E. coli infection. The doctors told Stephens that E. coli is usually spread by food – in particular, by undercooked hamburgers. However, Stephens' daughter hadn't eaten any hamburgers. Instead, she had been exposed to the dangerous disease at a swimming pool. A health department investigation showed that the chemical levels in the pool water hadn't been maintained properly. As a result, E. coli bacteria that had found their way into the water (probably from a person who was infected with E. coli but didn't know it) survived long enough to make a little girl very, very sick.

Fortunately, life-threatening illnesses associated with swimming pools are rare. But less serious illnesses are not. During the past 10 years, at least 15,000 people have become ill from swimming, according to the U.S. government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most of these illnesses were diarrheal illnesses, which were spread when people accidentally swallowed pool water that had been contaminated with fecal matter.

Because community pools are used by large numbers of people, outbreaks of waterborne diarrheal illness can be very large. In one outbreak involving a swim club pool in Ohio in 2000, more than 700 people became sick after the water was contaminated with the parasite Cryptosporidium

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