I am 47years old and have returned to swimming as a fitness choice. I get 3 workouts of 2500yds/week and feel great. I also have an inground pool that my family enjoys in the summer months. My question relates to the long term consequences of chlorine exposure. Do studies exist that show whether swimmers have an increased health risk to cancers? Has anyone looked at pool chlorine exposure as a health risk in any way? The pools I swim in all use chlorine as a sanitizer and I would hate to think my exercise regimen may be doing me more harm than good!
Former Member
Thank you for your posts. I'm actually looking for prospective or retrospective epidemiological studies on swimmers at the recreational or competitive level. I recognize that there are large variations in the "soups" we swim in and I certainly hope that swimming in sanitized "soup" is better than no swimming at all. However, long term exposure to oxidants like chlorine is something I feel is worthy of study. I take antioxidants (Vit E) and shower with antioxidant soaps but there is at best anecdotal evidence to support this as helpful (or even necessary). Please keep posting!
Showering beforehand might keep chlorine from geting in through the skin so much, but that benefit gets cancelled out fast when you drink a couple gallons from someone's butterfly kick ahead of you. I try not to think about it too much.
Okay some thought from a pool person and swimmer.
The use of Ozone as a disenfectant in pools is only partially true (at least in Oregon) we have an ozone system (about the size used for a small waste water treatment plant yet our pool is a 25meter by 25 yard pool). We are required to keep a trace amount of disenfectant (chlorine in our case, but could be bromine or something else) the reason being is all of the ozone disenfecting is done in the backroom, the ozone is injected into the water lines and then filtered out later before the water returns back to the pool. When we fill our small toddler pool after a scrub down, the incoming tap water is cloudier then what our lap pool is - something to be said about our pool treated water versus our tap water.
How much disenfectant you use in a pool depends on what you are using and the pool pH. For chlorine the pH controls how volutile (for better words) it will be, you will actually have better disenfection with a pool that has .4ppm (parts per million)chlorine and a pH of 7.2 than a pool with 4.0ppm and a pH of 7.6. As for the smell, burning eyes things like that has to do with your combined chlorine or chlorimines - this is what happens after your chlorine does its job disenfecting, a high combined chlorine results in bad water (smell & burning eyes). Going back to Ozone, ozone actually destroys combined chlorine - so how good is this - we play water polo for 1-2 hours and do not have burning eyes or halo's around lights when we are done. Lastly as for pool chemist schools there are several organizations that teach pool chemistry the biggest two certifications tend to AFO (Aquatics Facility Operator) or CPO (Certified Pool OPerator).
This is probably more than you wanted to know about pool stuff, have fun swimming.
Jeff
Everything in life has a benefit/risk ratio.
There is no doubt that swimming in chlorinated water exposes one to choramines, which are potentially mutagenic/carcinogenic and which clearly increase the risk of asthma. It would be important for USA Swimming or someone else to fund a study (a "case control" type of study) to answer the question of whether or not the incidence of sarcomas or leukemia (cancers of childhood and adolescence) is increased in age group and senior swimmers. Owing to the rarity of these tumors in the general population of young people, this should be a "doable" study, requiring reasonable expenditures. At minimum, a central registry should be established, where cases can be recorded and archived, for use by a future researcher. Club swim coaches should be required to report cases of cancer in young swimmers to a central registry (protecting individual privacy, of course).
At the masters level, cancer is so common (and so is death) that it would be a much more difficult proposition to get data to answer the question of whether or not pool swimming has serious long term health risks.
The risks of pool swimming may not be completely known, but the benefits are pretty obvious. I take personal comfort in the fact that my 87 year old father (for the past 5 years a USMS All Star), has been a dedicated pool (and open water) swimmer since age 6 and has so obviously benefitted in so many ways that, to me, it makes the benefit/risk ratio obvious also - decisively in favor of a lifestyle which includes swimming often, swimming seriously, and remaining a competitor for life.
- Larry
>>I am 47years old and have returned to swimming as a fitness choice. I
get 3 workouts of 2500yds/week and feel great. I also have an inground
pool that my family enjoys in the summer months. My question relates to
the long term consequences of chlorine exposure. Do studies exist that
show whether swimmers have an increased health risk to cancers? Has
anyone looked at pool chlorine exposure as a health risk in any way? The
pools I swim in all use chlorine as a sanitizer and I would hate to
think my exercise regimen may be doing me more harm than good!<<
Anyone with concerns over exposure to chlorine should visit
the website indicated by Zoomer in his Feb 12 post.
Most local YMCA's are always looking for ways to cut costs--
"defered maintenance" would seem to be a popular choice.
At our Y, the coach
noticed an increase in respiratory problems in the
kids. Found out the air-to-air heat exchanger (a heat saving
device that warms fresh outdoor air while exhausting pool
area air) had never been cleaned! It was "stuffed". It
made a big difference when it was cleaned.
Imagine some of the synergistic effects the could take place
when the chloramines mix with mold spores.
Now that I think about it, I have had bronchitis almost every
January for years (and am otherwise extremely healthy).
Oh, and my back itches like crazy every winter, too.:confused:
What the heck, I'm going swimming anyway.
There is a lot of baloney out there about this subject and some of it comes from people who supposedly know the chemistry but do not swim in the water they guard so zealously. Let's get real; chlorine is a poison. It doesn't take long for janitors and lifeguards to figure out that the water can be kept really clear and clean by just adding lots of it to the water. Then they attempt to "cancel it out" by adding a bunch of soda-ash which brings the pH up and looks good on a report. Soda-ash is poisonous too. The net result is flaming eye-balls and super-dry skin. When I swim in our pool, I suffer both. In some other pools, I don't. When I bring this to the attention of management, the attitude seems to be that it is somehow my fault !!! I would like to talk to a CPO who also trains in the pool they manage. Bert
Hey Bert,
Well I hope you are planning to attend the T-Hills Pentathlon meet at Nike. I am not a CPO but an AFO (same difference really, but we also have a CPO on staff). The difference is I do swim in my water so you can bet it's going to be good. Unfortunately other places I have worked the water quality is poor but the upper management didn't want to spend the money to fix it, so it's not necessarily the pool tech - that's like blaming the teachers for not teaching up to date material because they have 20 year old text books. Hope to see you in a few weeks.
Jeff
I wouldn't worry about it too much. I've been swimming for many years and aside from my skin drying out in the winter due to dry air, not a big problem. I do shower again before I go to bed because of the chlorine smell which tells me there is a lot of chlorine in my skin. Just don't inhale, especially underwater.
Jon
