The chemicals that keep a pool safe send thousands to hospital

**Pool chemicals prevent the spread of germs that cause illness and disease
outbreaks. The same chemicals cause injuries when mishandled.**

**An estimated 3,000–5,000 emergency department visits caused by pool
chemical injuries occur in the United States each year.**

The injuries are: poisoning from inhaling or swallowing pool chemicals, and
dermatitis or conjunctivitis from splashes — skin and eyes.

That figure sits beside a 2018 toxic chlorine gas incident in New York,
reported in the same issue, which is what the upper end of this looks like.

Three things that prevent almost all of it

• Follow the product label directions
• Wear proper safety equipment when handling chemicals — a respirator or
  goggles
• Keep chemicals out of the reach of children and teenagers

None is surprising, and the injury count says they are not being done. The
second is the one most often skipped, because handling pool chemicals does not
feel like handling an industrial chemical — and it is.

The code nobody has to adopt

CDC's Model Aquatic Health Code is a set of recommendations that **state
and local jurisdictions can voluntarily adopt** to prevent chemical injuries,
disease outbreaks and drowning at public treated recreational water venues —
pools, hot tubs and spas, and water playgrounds at hotels and apartment
complexes.

Voluntary is the operative word. There is no national pool safety law; there is
a model code, updated every three years with the Council for the MAHC, that
each jurisdiction may take or leave. Which means the quality of a pool's
chemical handling depends on which county it is in.

What swimmers can do

The other half of pool safety is not chemical at all — it is what the chemicals
are there to deal with:

• Shower before getting in the water
• Never urinate or defecate in the water
• **Take young swimmers on bathroom breaks, or check their nappies, every
  hour**

Less contamination means less chlorine demand, which means fewer of the
chemicals that cause the injuries above. The two halves of pool safety are the
same problem.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MMWR.