New Study Shows Effects of Exposure To Swimming Pool Chlorine Equivalent to Smoking

The anti-tobacco lobby has persistently claimed that the rapidly rising rate of asthma in kids is due to second hand smoke (SHS) - this despite the fact that smoking rates are falling!

Now a Belgian study tells us that a lot of children's asthma is likely due to chlorine exposure in indoor swimming pools. Never mind second hand smoke, the effect on their lungs is equivalent to that of actual smokers! This is not surprising. Chlorine is an extremely toxic chemical - just recall the panic that ensues when a chlorine tank car overturns - emergency operations teams flocking to the site, whole communities evacuated, etc. In light of all the evidence, could the alleged asthma /SHS link be yet another of the Health Industry's red herrings?

What is really disconcerting is that, among all of the Canadian health agencies who keep telling us that SHS is lethal, none of them appear to have done anything to evaluate the threat to our kids from this lethal chemical that is used, often indiscriminately, in swimming pools. Incidentally, these are some of the same people who told us that the SARS outbreak was under control.

While the Belgian study addresses only indoor pools, the question has to be asked - what about outdoor pools? We have councillors continually bleating about the use of pesticides in our gardens - but perhaps they should take a look at the gallons of chlorine being toted out of stores every day throughout the summer for use in backyard pools. Rather then ramming through totally unnecessary smoking bans, maybe they should take a closer look at what is being put into swimming pools in their municipalities, and the potential dangers it might be causing.

One last observation. The report says that the threat to people from the effects of chlorine in pools is reduced by simple ventilation. This just happens to be the exact solution being proposed by PUBCO for the elimination of second hand smoke!



Barry F. McKay
General Manager
Pub and Bar Coalition of Canada (PUBCO)
Ottawa
613 523-0840

cc PUBCO Members
Interested Parties
Queens Park
Media

PARIS -- Chlorine used to disinfect indoor swimming pools could be one of the causes behind an astonishing surge in childhood asthma in developed countries in the past few decades, a new study indicates.

The suspected culprit is trichloramine, a gassy, easily inhalable irritant that is released in a complex process when chlorinated water reacts with urine, sweat or other organic matter brought by swimmers.

Trichloramine has previously been pointed to as a trigger for three proteins that destroy the cellular barrier protecting the lungs, making it permeable and more prone to the passage of allergens, the substances that unleash an asthma attack.

Belgian researchers, writing in the British research journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, took blood samples from 226 young primary-school children who had swum regularly at indoor pools since early childhood.

They also took samples from 29 adults and children both before and after a session in an indoor pool.

The samples show that youngsters who regularly attend indoor pools accumulate these proteins, making them more at risk from asthma.

Most frightening of all: The children who swam most frequently had protein levels of the kind found in regular smokers.

Protein levels even rose measurably among people who had been sitting at the poolside and had not been swimming.

"The increasing exposure of chlorination products in indoor pools might be an important cause of the rising incidence of childhood asthma and allergic disease in industrialized countries," say the scientists, led by Alfred Bernard, a toxicologist at Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels.

The effects were the same for children wherever they lived, and remained after other environmental pollutants were accounted for.

Levels of trichloramine -- chemical name nitrogen trichloride (NCl 3) -- vary considerably, however. They depend on how crowded the pool is, on the ventilation and on how clean the swimmers are.

Chlorine has been used for several decades to kill bacteria in indoor pools.

But the authors were astounded when they were unable to locate a single serious study to check whether this or other disinfectant chemicals pose a risk to swimmers, especially children, who are the most frequent users.