University of Arizona scientists are looking for ways to improve the current method for testing water in public swimming pools.
With nearly 9 million public and private swimming pools across the country (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), finding better ways of detecting poor water quality conditions before they end up making people ill would be of obvious benefit to the public health system.
An approximately $65,000 grant from the National Swimming Pool Foundation, as well as the Research Foundation for Health and Environmental Effects, has been awarded to the University to create a standard questionnaire that can be used while conducting a general health impact study on pools and spas.
Several notable inquiries have hinted at a link between swimming pool environments and an increased risk of asthma, cancer, and other serious diseases, although these studies often omit how the facilities tested were treated or managed. They also don’t provide clear data on individual exposure to the water, which further complicates the matter of being able to replicate the study’s conclusions in separate testing.
Current testing survey tools lack the ability to test a variety of factors that might contribute the the incidence of swimming-related illnesses, including time spent in the water, amount of water ingested, and number of times a swimmer’s head goes under water. The anticipated result of the the project is a battery of questions that can be taken advantage of in future disease outbreak and epidemic research, enabling comparison of solid data, which should advance the mission of improving the health of both public and private swimming pools.
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