Have you ever tried to go swimming and the pool was closed for health reasons? When I was a kid, I remember on many occasions going to the neighborhood pool only to find out that the pool was closed for the rest of the day because the chlorine was too high. As a competitive swimmer, sometimes we would show up to practice ready to train and the pool was closed for the same reasons.
What causes a pool to be temporarily closed or permanently shut down?
Temporary closures are commonly due to the chlorine levels being too high from an accidental chemical overload or from shocking the pool. Shocking a pool kills off unwanted bacteria (from algae or from a child pooping or vomiting in the pool), but leaves the pool with extremely high chlorine levels that are unsafe for humans. The only thing to lower high levels of chlorine is to wait until the chemicals have returned to a safe level.
Local public health agencies or individual states are the governing bodies for pool operation, and thus the exact regulations warranting pool closure vary from city to city. In 2008, the Centers for Disease Control compiled results from a country-wide inspection of pools and found that a total of 13,532 (12.1 percent) of 111,487 pool inspections resulted in immediate pool closure due to serious public health violations. But what were these serious public health violations?
Here is what the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) found in an extensive online survey published in 2014 about the top three reasons that commercial pools are being shut down:
Low sanitizing levels / low chlorine
pH imbalance
Turbidity
Not surprisingly, they also found that in places where there is higher employee turnover, like hotels and apartment complexes, there is a higher probability of the pool getting shut down, due to less experienced employees.
Since May is National Water Safety month, be sure that your pool does not get shut down! Clear Comfort helps to lower the use of chlorine, thus, simplifies water chemistry balance. In addition, it destroys contaminants like Cryptosporidium.
Claire McDaniel
Claire is a swimming and nutrition expert who loves to educate and motivate others to healthier living. She swam competitively for 18 years, is a five time All-American, a Division I National Champion, was co-captain of Team USA at the 2007 World University Games and was named a finalist for the NCAA Woman of the Year Award. She also has a master’s degree in nutrition and is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist. After swimming, Claire started coaching and has coached all over the US and even in Switzerland! Her experience and expertise about both swimming and health fuel her passion for Clear Comfort’s mission – to make swimming a 100 percent healthy activity for swimmers, coaches, lifeguards and pool staff.
