Alergic reaction to chlorine?

I once herd you cannot be allergic to chlorine yet this topic keeps coming up. If you are allergic to chlorine don't drink water, drink wine or beer. The odd whiskie sour is good to, no ice cubes as the water they use is chlorinated.

Hey I have had the same reaction for two years I swim for about a week. Then I get a really dry throat and my sinus plug up I have no idea what to do. I have thought about going to the allergist but last time I went to a doctor they told me I have a sinus infection. (this lasted for the whole season 3 months) Would you suggest going to an allergist or do you have any tips on what to do?

They once did a survey, I think at Johns Hopkins, and patients wrote on a paper what they thought they were allergic to. Oxygen was included in a lot of answers. Another study or story is that if you give a glass of water containing only water to 1,000 people and have them visit a doctor, half will have some complaints related to the "water" they took. Chlorine is part of our daily lives. If there is excess of chlorine in the water you drink or in the pool you swim, you might get irritation from it. Just like drinking salt water might make you puke, but not when drinking Gatorade, which contains the very same salt. It is all a question of excesses. As for allergy, George above is right, you can't be allergic to something that is so much part of your daily life. I would believe that a sinus condition is a combination of many factors, the least of which would be the swimming.Last week I had, for the first time in decades, an inner ear infection. It happened the evening after a swimming meet at a public pool where I swam a 400 freestyle and a 50 butterfly (butterstruggle the last 10 meters). I immediately blamed the pool and started to self treat myself with alcohol and other stuff into my ear. When I went to the doctor on Monday and he looked at my ear he told me it was not on the outer part but inside, and had nothing to do with anything on the exterior. Actually it was caused by some nose-throat-whatever which communicates with the inner ear. So I took the medication and stopped dumping alcohol and peroxide into my ear. The infection and inflammation went away within a week. Take care, billy fanstone

I have been swimming my entire life and I have always had a runny nose. Never tried to figure out what it is, it just is, but after I stop swimming and return home, it all goes away. :dunno:Donna

I think this topic will always reappear and people will always be interested in it because we generally don't understand the difference between an allergic reaction and an irratation. I've been told that chlorine isn't a protein so it can't cause an allergic reaction. It can, like aspirin, cause an irratation. There is no IgE. That's why you cna't be skin-tested for chlorine! Then during this past week, I was getting ready for work when I heard on a morning chat show that swimmers can have problems with chlorine and nasal congestion. About 2 years ago there was an article in Lancet that suggested swimmers with asthma have slightly different lung structure than do both asthmatics who do not swim and nonasthmatics who swim. This new study seems to suggest that the same thing can happen in the nasal passages of asthmatic swimmers and what might also happen in their lungs. I guess your nasal passages get irrated so many times hta they create a defense mechanism to fight this. I've had polyps removed two times. I also have severe asthma. I've had doctors do all sorts of weird things to my nose. I was told that since I broke my nose (actually my older brother broke my nose when he was a tennager by throwing me off of the garage roof when I was 4 yrs old), I am particularily susseptible to polyps. I'm not a doctor nor do I play one onTV. I've found Flonase really helps keep the situation at bay though.

I used to have the same symptoms a couple of years ago. They changed the chemicals in the filtration system into a new one and I'm perfectly fine. I've tried another pool yesterday and my old friend (allergic reaction) came back. I'm sure that it is related to the chemicals they use to clean the pool water.

Hey Larry, I had a bad earache a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night after having been in a swim meet where I swam 400 free and 50 fly. I immediately figured I had an impacted wax or water or whatever in my external ear (don't know the exact scientific terms in English). So next I went against that old saying that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, and started treating myself. I poured alcohol, peroxide and other stuff into my ear, took some ibuprofen and waited for Monday to come to go to a real ear, nose, throat guy. Well, my problem was not in the external ear, but in the middle ear. So all that junk I stuck into my ear from the outside never came close to the problem. I had to take some antibiotics and some cortisone. Moral of the story: not all ear problems are on the outside, and not all ear problems are related to swimming. In my case it was an infection, probably though the nose into the middle ear. How can you swim with the nose clip and not drown? I tried it for backstroke but it doesn't do it for me. I occasionally use ear plugs mostly for the silence, as I also do when riding the motorcycle. Take care, billy fanstone.

I wear both earplugs and noseplug and have never been bothered by this type of problem. Rememer these organs communicate w/in the skull and can be synergistic in causing or solving problems. Good luck.

Debrox brand (earwax) remover has worked well for me in the past.

Good ear wax removers stop the outer ear infections www.americarx.com/index.asp