Bacteria, Virus and Fungus Infections

Keeping Inflatable Pools Safe a Lot of Work: Bacteria, Virus and Fungus Infections
Natalie Brun
Weekly News - Halifax West, August 10, 2007

I bit the bullet this summer and bought my children an above-ground pool.

Three of my children want to spend their entire day at the beach; one child needs an afternoon nap because he is still a baby.

So, as a family, we compromised. spend the morning at the beach, the afternoon in the backyard in their pool.

Once we were able to find the pool we were looking for, I thought it was smooth sailing.

I set it up, filled it with 250 gallons of water, shocked it with chlorine, plugged in the filter and off the kids went.

I set up my chair next to the pool, cracked open a new book and stared to enjoy my summer afternoons. I should have known it was all too good to be true.

One week later, my children's fingers and toes looked like prunes, but they were having a great time.

Then came the heat wave, as well as an army of neighbourhood kids, and things started to get very gross, very quickly.

Our pool filter started to make strange sounds, and the water started to get murky then green.

I unplugged the pool and watched 250 gallons of water flow over the sides of the pool and saturated my gareden.

I thought, "What have we gotten ourselves into?"

And that's just it . . . when you buy a pool - you are getting yourself into a substantial financial commitment.

If you buy a plastic kiddie pool that holds no more than two feet of water, you are safe from bacteria IF you dump the water after two or three days.

Anything larger than that, you need regular maintenance, or else children using the pool are susceptible to a bevy of infections.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa , a common bacterium found in stagnant water that is untreated with the appropriate levels of chlorine, can cause swimmer's itch, ear infections, bronchitis and pink eye, to name a few ailments.

[Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen, meaning that it exploits some break in the host defenses (including burns and cuts) to initiate an infection. It causes urinary tract infections, respiratory system infections, dermatitis, soft tissue infections, bacteremia, bone and joint infections, gastrointestinal infections and a variety of systemic infections, particularly in patients with severe burns and in cancer and AIDS patients who are immunosuppressed. Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection is a serious problem in patients hospitalized with cancer, cystic fibrosis, and burns. The case fatality rate in these patients is 50 percent. ]

[P. aeruginosa is naturally resistant to a large range of antibiotics and may demonstrate additional resistance after unsuccessful treatment]

[Recreational Water Illnesses -RWIs
RWIs are illnesses that are spread by swallowing, breathing, or having contact with contaminated water from swimming pools, spas, lakes, rivers, or oceans. Recreational water illnesses can cause a wide variety of symptoms, including gastrointestinal, skin, ear, respiratory, eye, neurologic and wound infections. The most commonly reported RWI is diarrhea.

Diarrheal illnesses can be caused by germs such as:

• Crypto (short for Cryptosporidium),
• Giardia, Shigella (which can cause Reiter's syndrome that can last for months or years, and can lead to chronic arthritis which is difficult to treat),
• norovirus (this is a Norwalk-like virus -NLV),
• E. coli O157:H7 Escherichia coli O157:H7 (In some persons, particularly children under 5 years of age and the elderly, the infection can also cause a complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), in which the red blood cells are destroyed and the kidneys fail.) ]

[How to protect myself and your family from diarrheal illnesses (hyperlink to flash presentation)
Healthy Swimming behaviors are needed to protect you and your kids from recreational water illnesses (RWIs) and will help stop germs from getting in the pool in the first place.
Here are six “P-L-E-As” that promote Healthy Swimming:

1. Please don't swim when you have diarrhea. This includes kids in diapers. You can spread germs in the water and make other people sick.
2. Please don't swallow the pool water. In fact, avoid getting water in your mouth.
3. Please practice good hygiene. Take a shower before swimming and wash your hands after using the toilet or changing diapers. Germs on your body end up in the water.
4. Please take your kids on bathroom breaks or check diapers often. Waiting to hear "I have to go" may mean that it's too late.
5. Please change diapers in a bathroom and not at poolside. Germs can spread to surfaces and objects in and around the pool and spread illness.
6. Please wash your child thoroughly (especially the rear end) with soap and water before swimming. Everyone has invisible amounts of fecal matter on their bottoms that ends up in the pool. ]

[Maintain water quality and equipment.

Keep the chemical feed equipment and chemicals at optimal levels within state and local government regulations. This includes maintaining the disinfectant at regulated levels:

Optimal pH (7.2-7.8) [pH > 8.0 - Poor Chlorine Disinfection - Eye Irritation - Skin Irritation, pH<>Eye Irritation- Skin Irritation- Pipe Corrosion;

Alkalinity (80-120 ppm) ;

Calcium hardness (200-400 ppm) , and

Total dissolved solids (below 2500mg/liter).
As you know, poor pH control can compromise chlorine’s effectiveness as a disinfectant. ]

Analise Park-Adlin, spokesperson for Best-way Fast Pool, one of the most popular fast-fill pools sold by Toys R Us, said most people buy pools and expect the attached filters to do the dirty work.

"The filter is equipped to take the debris out of the pool," she said, "It is in no way meant to protect anyone using the pool from viruses that are commonly associated with stagnant, untreated water.

I searched my pool manual from top to bottom to find the directions as to how often I need to treat my pool and with how much chlorine.

When I told Park-Adlin that there was no mention of treating the pool in my owner's manual, she had little to say other than, "Every pool needs chlorine."

So how much and how often?

While there are no exact measurements, there are ways that above-ground pool owners can maintain their sanity and keep their children safe from bacterial infections.

Buy a test kit where you buy pools. Wal-Mart, Toys R Us and Zellers always have them in their seasonal section with the pool kits.

1. Buy a pool brush or a bristle brush to wipe down the pool walls and floor. Only the free floating debris will be filtered through the filter system.
2. Shock the pool every week, with a stabilizing form of chlorine (call local pool distributors and cleaners for exact amounts.
3. Buy a pool algaecide. Measurements vary according to pool size, but are needed on a wekly basis.
4. Borax the pool when it is empty -it's the best way to get rid of germs.

I wish someone had told me all this before I bought the pool. It would have been easier to go to the beach!