The reasons why swimming in chlorinated pools is dangerous to health and the 6 steps to take to protect yourself and your family while still enjoying water fun all summer long.
The reasons why swimming in chlorinated pools is dangerous to health and the 6 steps to take to protect yourself and your family while still enjoying water fun all summer long.
An important topic to explore as we head into the summer season is chlorinated pools.
Chlorine is popular because it handles the three main jobs in keeping a swimming pool clean: It sanitizes (kills bacteria and germs), oxidizes (controls organic debris from perspiration and body oils), and deters algae. The chemical is unpopular, however, because it has a strong odor, reddens eyes, causes allergic reactions in some swimmers, and is a known carcinogen – meaning it has been linked to cancer!
Chlorine absorbs into your skin. Too much exposure to chlorine has been linked to major health problems including reproductive disorders and even birth defects. It can cause your skin and hair to dry out and over time too much exposure can even cause wrinkles.
Editor’s Note: Have you ever wondered why Olympic swimmers seem to have so many wrinkles at such young ages and most of the men start losing their hair so quickly? Could it, in fact, be caused by overexposure to chlorine for so many years and so many hours every day? Perhaps so.
When chlorinated pools are indoors, toxic gases such as nitrogen trichloride are released, which can be very dangerous. When we breathe in this gas it can cause severe damage to the lining of the lungs which could lead to respiratory problems or asthma. This toxic gas can be harmful at any age yet it poses the most risk to elderly people and small children.
So while chlorine used to disinfect swimming pools is widely recognized as a health hazard, not everyone has access to the ocean or a lake, or pools treated with ozone, ionizers, bromine, silver-cooper, or other alternatives which can frequently be much more expensive.
6 Tips to Protect Health in Swimming Pools
If you or your family members do choose to swim in chlorinated pools, some recommendations I’ve read are to:
1. Swim in outdoor chlorinated pools only if at all possible. It is much safer because the toxic gases are mostly eliminated in the open air.
2. Swim in chlorinated pools occasionally. It is regular exposure to chlorinated pools that presents the greatest risk to health.
3. Shower immediately before and after using a natural Castile soap.
4. Drink plenty of home-filtered water (better than bottled!) beforehand so that you are well hydrated.
5. Consider wearing a mask and snorkel to shield your eyes – and even a wetsuit, if you are willing to go that far!
6. Get fresh air afterward so you don’t continue to inhale the fumes, and can clear your lungs.
Why shower immediately before swimming in a chlorinated pool?
Julie Deardorff explains in her article published in the Chicago Tribute, “Another important reason to shower is that our bodies generally contain residue from consumer products, including perfume, make-up, body lotion, shampoo, and sunscreen.
When the chemicals used to disinfect the pool mix with organic matter (sweat, hair, urine) or nitrogen-rich substances (commonly found in consumer products) it can create a more toxic agent, said Michael Plewa, a professor of genetics at the University of Illinois whose new research has linked pool chemicals to health problems, including asthma and bladder cancer.”
Red, burning, itchy eyes and skin?
What I’ve read is that the presence of chloramines can cause reactions such as red, burning, irritated eyes: Chloramines form when chlorine reacts with ammonia. Ammonia enters the pool through sweat and urine. It is important to teach children not to urinate in pool water [even though it is chlorinated].
Also, showering before swimming can remove excess sweat that interacts with chlorine. My understanding is that if the sweat is on your skin, and hasn’t been rinsed off first in the shower, the chlorine will interact with the sweat on your skin as you enter the pool, and may result in some folks getting itchy skin.
So, what do you think? Do the benefits and joy of swimming and playing in a pool outweigh the health risks of chlorine?
Additional articles on this topic
The Dangers of Chlorine
Asthma In Swimmers
Swimming Pools May Increase Cancer Risk
The Hidden Danger of Swimming Pools
Swimming Pool Alternatives to Chlorine
Water Birth Dangers
Momtojq – Excellent advice and I thank you for posting it.
Thanks Sarah,
We just bought our “farm” and it has a pool. Some good info. I wonder if the shower before should be cold. If the warm/hot water would open up pores and take more chlorine in?
Hi Rick,
Sarah is on vacation and solicited me to write 2 posts in her absence and to answer related questions. My understanding is that the shower before is intended to remove sweat and consumer products such a lotions and shampoos. “When the chemicals used to disinfect the pool mix with organic matter (sweat, hair, urine) or nitrogen-rich substances (commonly found in consumer products) it can create a more toxic agent.” The shower after is intended to wash off the chlorine.
I think your point about a cold shower before a chorinated pool is valid!
You’re right about it should be as cold has your body can stand.
When I was a small child (40 years ago) all the public pools had a cold shower that you had to go through before getting into the pool (which I hated btw). Nowadays they don’t seem to have those.
Sarah: Thanks for sharing this very informative post. I’ve shared it with my Facebook readers ). Amy
Thanks, Amy!
Several years ago I developed hypothyroidism, after doing water aerobics twice a week, in an indoor pool!!
My mom was a competitive swimmer for 30 years, sometimes in ocean races but mostly chlorinated outdoor pools. She developed thyroid issues that in my opinion are due to chlorine exposure. I started taking lugol’s iodine before swimming in chlorine and i shower beforehand because i read that saturating the skin will absorb less pool water. I also read that vitamin C is the only thing that can filter chloramine, sometimes i use vitamin C spray on my skin before and after swimming, and i have a vitamin C shower filter at home.
Our family went on a mini vacation in March and my daughter, Kyra, was the only child who has problems with swimming in the indoor pool. It ruined her hair. After we arrived home from our vacation, I did some research on how to protect her hair next time. Make sure she showers before swimming in the pool. This simple thing makes the hair pores close up. Because the pores are closed, it won’t drink aany of the pool water. I am going to assume it does the same thing with our skin. Then they need to wash down real good after swimming. Thank you for the article.
I am in a pool every day. Lap swim at least a mile every day in an indoor pool. I don’t like the chlorine exposure. That said, I feel that the benefit that I get from being physically fit and not tearing up my joints and bones in the process FAR, FAR outweighs any detriment I get from the chlorine. I do shower immediately with Dr. Bronners upon getting out of the pool. I don’t wait until I get home. And I drink raw milk kefir every day to repopulate any gut flora that may get killed off from the chlorine. Once again, as with everything in life, you have to figure out what’s best for you. I know that for me personally, I would not be in as good a shape as I am now without the swimming. I am 55 years old, fit and healthy. Swimming is a wonderful sport and fitness activity that can be enjoyed and engaged in literally from cradle to grave!
I wholeheartedly concur – I love to swim! I grew up in Laguna Beach from the age of 12 and the community I lived in had an outdoor pool and the beach. I didn’t know anything about the dangers of chlorine but, I preferred the ocean over the pool.
I’d have to agree-swimming is an amazingly good sport for you. It’s actually the 2nd best sport you can do…even above cross country skiing. Love it!
Just a side note, I used to work at a swimming school in as part of the training we learned the dangers of accidental drownings. Children can drown in as little as 2 inches of water–buckets, puddles, toilets, bath tubs, pools, lakes/rivers. It is SO important to teach your kids how to swim (and how to climb out of a pool), more important (in my opinion) than subjecting them to chlorine for an hour a week. Where I live, there are not very many options for swimming other than chlorinated pools. By all means search out natural bodies of water, but whatever you do teach your kids how to swim. A 5 year old has a lung capacity of a 20 oz bottle of soda and when empty can fill with water in seconds. (Experiment at home by holding a bottle upright under water without the cap…scary.)
I asked our naturopath this very question a few years ago. His response, which I thought made a lot of sense, was the exercise and sunshine are so good for you and outweigh a lot of the risks. He said, “no” to indoor swimming which we have avoided since then. He also recommended that I wet my boys’ hair with spring water before they get in. Thus, their hair is already wet and won’t absorb as much. Secondly, he recommended we “lube up” with cocoa butter to give skin lots of moisture and an oily barrier. I think it has really helped, especially my browner skinned boy who tends to be dry anyhow. Not to mention, both boys smell edible like hershey chocolate bars. I thought that this was excellent advice and have followed it ever since. We swim approximately 2-3 times each week over the summer and follow this protocol to good success. Of course, showers as soon as we get home. Hope this is helpful to someone else as well.
I have a question. I’ve learned that I should wet down the kids and myself before getting into the pool. What about sunscreen? Do you put it on before the showering that you do before getting into the pool? Is this a dumb question (it’s late).
I don’t think it is a dumb question at all! The truth is, that according to the information I gathered, the whole point of taking a shower before the pool is to rinse off all of the lotions and potions from our bodies – so that we enter the pool clean.
“Another important reason to shower is that our bodies generally contain residue from consumer products, including perfume, make-up, body lotion, shampoo and sunscreen.
When the chemicals used to disinfect the pool mix with organic matter (sweat, hair, urine) or nitrogen-rich substances (commonly found in consumer products) it can create a more toxic agent, said Michael Plewa, a professor of genetics at the University of Illinois whose new research has linked pool chemicals to health problems, including asthma and bladder cancer.”
So I think sunscreen at any point would not serve based on what I read above. I suggest that kids swim for a limited time in the pool without sunscreen if the pool is outdoors and chlorinated.
After the pool, we are instructed to shower to rinse off the chlorine. Perhaps at that point, if they remain pool side, that would be the time to put on sunscreen, or just cover up.
Well, your answer was what I mostly expected. That is we should not use sunscreen because it is a lotion, which must be one of the nitrogen-rich substances you described.
Unfortunately, my children and I are pretty pale and will burn in about 20-30 minutes of mid-day (pool hour) summer sun.
For me, the knowledge about the dangers of chlorination creates one of those situations where you have to weigh the costs and benefits. Summer pool time holds lots of great childhood memories for me, and my children really love it. We usually go to the city pool for about an hour, about three times per week. This is one of the highlights of summer for my kids. We aren’t afraid of lakes, but the nearest one is about half an hour away, and I don’t feel comfortable taking so many little ones by myself when my partner is working.
Anyway, for me, this topic will remain on the back burner, and perhaps one day I will change my mind or think of a better solution. 🙂
Thank you for the information. I wonder also if you have any source information that you could share?
Sarah added the piece about olympic swimmers with wrinkles and hair loss after I submitted the article to her. I have no knowledge of that. I do know however that there are those who report that they do not tolerate chlorinated pools well. If I had a choice between a salt water pool or a chlorinated one, I would choose the salt water. The smell of chlorine alone is one I find offensive.
I reduce exposure to toxins when I can. There are chloramines in the water I bathe in in the city of San Francisco, however not in the water I drink because of the Radinat Life water filtration system I have installed. I live in a 12 unit building, and so a whole house water filtration system is prohibitive, and there aren’t filters i have found that elimate chloramines In the shower. There are filters that elimate chlorine however, and I would recommend those if one lives in a place where chlorine is in the municipal water.
My husband competed in water polo at the national level in Australia and it was a something the guys talked about and discussed among themselves – how men who swim competitively almost always lose their hair at a young age. I thought it was an interesting point to contemplate although I have not seen any supporting research on this, only anecdotal observation.
My husband swam competitively throughout his childhood into the first year of college. He is 42 now with a very full head of hair (enviously so). I think it was his diet and good hair genes, not the chlorinated pools that determined the hair growth. Maybe the tight swim caps have more to do with that. Many farmers are balding where they always wear their caps, as was the case for both of my husband’s grandfathers. I’m just glad we can avoid chlorinated water now as much as possible.
Thanks, Sarah!
Great article Sandrine, however we have learned so much about chloramines in the past few years, I would love to share it with you. First of all, the choice between salt water and chlorine is based only on smell – salt is actually more corrosive and harmful when it becomes chloride. Salt is just site generated chlorine, and produces more harmful disinfectant byproducts than chlorine.
Chloramines are the issue – trichloramines specifically. They off-gas and become airborne. For indoor pools, they are the cause of the “pool smell”, and yes they are harmful and corrosive. I am a competitive swimmer and had an asthma attack in a chlorine pool–I understand how harmful they are. But there is a system that is changing all of that, and it’s called the Paddock Evacuator. It captures and removes chloramines from indoor pools and works amazingly well. It brings a pristine environment indoors, where you cannot even smell the pool. Google it.
Everything in moderation.
But sometimes it seems as though we should all just live a bubble because “everything” can kill us.
I grew up swimming at an outdoor pool every summer, almost every day. At 24 I have no side effects of which is claimed in this article.
I’m just saying. At what point do we stop fearing everything around us and just live the best we can? I like this site and follow other sites like this, but sometimes its more of a “fear factor”. A will kill, B will kill you and C will keep you safe. So stay away from A and B and choose C.
/rant.
or better yet we can strive to live in a world where we find something to be harmful and look for a non-toxic alternative. everyone has these moments of dissonance where we feel bad about our past choices and try to defend them even though we know they weren’t the healthiest. the truth is we live in a filthy world of toxic chemicals, yes, and we are all exposed at some level whether we actively avoid them or not.
A person can’t better any situation without first acknowledging the fact that there is something to improve upon : )
i can take decades for cancer to develop so don’t get ahead of yourself saying you have no side effects. not cursing you to have cancer, i am just saying that it is not a good argument. if we know things are toxic, we should not be using them. period.
it*
Spreading information is important. It’s your choice what you do with that information.
With as many interactions with toxins as an American has each day, it would be wise to cut some of them out. Now you know about pools and you can decide whether that’s going to be on your nix list or not.
We’re not talking about throwing a clean and healthy hunter-gatherer into a chlorinated pool. We’re talking about us, who breath polluted air, play with plastic toys, eat chemicals, wear synthetic clothes, eat refined foods, were once probably vaccinated, and on and on and on. Modern people have some cleaning up to do.
My chiropractor told me that chlorine can also cause thyroid problems because the body treats it like iodine.
Thanks for that piece of information, Lisa. I had not come across it when researching this topic.
Chlorine is a destructive halogen element. Fluorine, chlorine, and bromine are halogens that have an affinity for iodine receptors – they essentially deplete your body of iodine. Iodine is absolutely critical for thyroid health and an iodine deficiency will inhibit thyroid hormone production resulting in a low thyroid state.
Thyroid expert Dr. David Brownstein found that more than 96% of his 5000+ patients tested were iodine deficient. As a public nutritionist I saw huge numbers of people (especially women in their late 30’s, early 40’s) who were suffering from low energy due to hypothyroidism due to low iodine. I wrote quite a bit about the chlorine and fluoride problem in my recent book entitled, “How to Heal your Pineal Gland to facilitate Enlightenment optimize Melatonin and Live Longer (The Enlightenment App).” In addition to the halogen-avoiding strategies I talk about in the book I take 225mcg of supplemental potassium iodide every day.
:o)
Thanks you so much for this information, Joel! This is of great interest to me and I will incorporate it in updates of this topic in the future!
Potassium is toxic. Iodine is a halogen (also toxic). Zinc will kill you. Guess what? Without them you also die. Might want to explore the consumption of potassium iodide a little closer, it is not necessarily safe.
You’re very welcome Sandrine!
Everything can kill you in the wrong doses poolswami, even water. Stay out of the deep end.