The purpose of this article is to create awareness regarding indoor pool air quality problems and why they exist, while answering frequently asked (and commonly misunderstood) questions.
Air quality has increasingly become a hot-button topic worldwide, garnering the attention of the World Health Organization (WHO) and US Centers for Disease Control (CDC). All of the information contained in this article is accessible online through credible resources, and we encourage all of you to research these topics on your own so that we can, together, keep our sport as safe and healthy as possible.
Take a moment and ask yourself: what’s the worst air quality you’ve ever experienced at an indoor pool? Not just recently…but ever. Have you ever wondered why? Why is the air so bad in most indoor pools, and seemingly fine in others? What’s making that happen? What’s really going on?
The answers boil down to basic chemistry and air physics.
For those familiar with science, we know that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Therefore, accept the following as inevitable: when people get in a pool [action], chemical byproducts off-gas into the air [reaction]. It is as simple as it sounds, and as guaranteed as the 400 IM is painful.
Of course, there are two types of pools: indoor and outdoor. Outdoor pools usually have no air quality problems because the chemical byproducts can escape unnoticed. Indoor pools, however, trap that contaminated air, and that is what we smell when we walk into a pool.
The chemical reactions that take place in pools are both inevitable and needed. Pools must stay clean for various health reasons, so most rely on a primary disinfectant chemical such as chlorine or bromine (for this article, we use ‘chlorine’ generally to cover both). As a disinfectant, chlorine’s purpose is to attack and eliminate organics – including bacteria, dirt, sweat, body oils, hair, dead skin, mucus and yes, urine.
Have you ever wondered why chlorine bleaches your hair and makes it feel dead and sticky? It’s exactly the problem that Dr. Chadeayne addresses with SwimSpray. Chlorine gives us ‘swimmer hair’, and dries out our skin because it’s just doing its job. Our hair, skin and the rest of our body is shedding organics into the water constantly, and chlorine is in a constant battle trying to burn up those organics. The process is called oxidation. [Your pool’s operator can explain further].
The bottom line: chlorine attacks organics, and that chemical reaction creates byproducts.
So what are those byproducts and where do they go? There are several types of disinfectant byproducts (DBPs). The main byproducts are called chloramine(s), which are the focus of this article. There are three types of chloramines: mono-, di-, and trichloramines.
Mono- and dichloramines stay waterborne until they become trichloramines (formally called Nitrogen Trichloride), which off-gas into the air and produce that familiar ‘pool smell’ in most natatoriums. Furthermore, the trichloramines are what burn our eyes, skin, nose and throat. Trichloramines are the crux of the problem. It is also important to note that the atomic weight of Nitrogen Trichloride is far heavier than oxygen, which means trichloramines are heavy and stay low in the natatorium.
As a swimmer or swimming coach, you may be thinking ‘that’s just boring chemistry stuff,’ but it is essential to understanding air quality problems in indoor pools. Think about it: harmful trichloramines off-gas from the surface of the water, and they are heavier than oxygen, so they just sit there …
Where do swimmers breathe?
The worst air in the room is what swimmers are inhaling the entire workout or race. It’s part of the reason why so many swimmers have respiratory problems throughout the season, and why many need inhalers on deck next to their water bottles. The unfortunate reality is trichloramines are directly linked to a plethora of health risks that range from a simple cough or sore throat to more serious issues. For more health information click here.
To recap, chlorine cleans the pool by oxidizing organics, and the result is chloramines. Trichloramines need to off-gas into the air for the oxidation process to complete; when they do, they stay low in the air because their atomic weight is heavier than oxygen. The contaminated “chloramine bubble” continues to build because it cannot escape the building, and soon it begins to be noticed by people walking on the deck, such as coaches and lifeguards. The effect only grows and compounds itself when air physics get involved.
To be continued…
Who is The Paddock Evacuator Company?
We are swimmers and swammers, just like you, who have suffered through bad air quality for countless years.
We know how miserable an indoor pool can be during swim practice or a meet, because we’ve lived it. It is personal to us, and we have devoted our careers to not only educating the swimming community about air quality, but actually solving the problem. Our mission is to make the indoor pool a healthy, desirable place to be—not just a tolerated amenity. More at www.paddockevacuator.com.
Learn more and like Paddock Evacuator on Facebook here.
This release is courtesy of Paddock Evacuator, a SwimSwam partner.
So, I’m not 100% sure if this is the correct place to ask, but it goes along with the article. My family was recently traveling & stayed at a hotel over night. We went down to the indoor pool to swim. The air was extremely “heavy”… more than normal. My father, who has stage 4 COPD, came in for no more than two minutes, and had to leave because I threw him a coughing fit. Within a week he was diagnosed with bronchitis, and has continued for over a month & a half now & has sent him to the hospital due to passing out each time he coughs. The thing is, my husband, as well as my 15 year… Read more »
Air at GAC was so much better at juniors than at Y nats last year. I swim at a Y in South Carolina and it has a lap pool where we swim, and a pool with a slide and kid stuff in it, like buckets and sprayers. The air in there is so bad your eyes burn walking from one door to the other. I remember about a year ago they had an evacuator put in and it was amazing. The thing really works well. (then for some reason it was taken back out?)
It didn’t click with me that it was an evacuator until they brought the same thing to GAC for juniors. I remember the air got… Read more »
We’ve been to a lot of stinky, murky pools.
However, our home pool has a gutter-based evacuator system and a seriously type-a pool operator. Winning combination. No noticeable chlorine smell – even on the last day of hosting sectionals.
We recently went to a pool over Christmas break with an on-deck system. A bit humid but nothing that you would expect with multiple teams practicing for most of the day.
It’s 2014. We have the technology. We shouldn’t have wet swimmers going outside in the snow to get fresh air.
German air and water quality standards are among if not the toughest in the world. Aldest http://www.aldest.ca/index.php?lang=en has some time tested and easy to install solutions that will allow pools in North America to offer “German quality” air and water to the swimming public as well as to competitive swimmers……
SwimSwam,
Thank you for posting. Queens University of Charlotte has been blessed with an evaquator built into the gutter system. Our air quaility, even with a full load, has been compared to that of swimming outdoors. Inhaler use has decreased significantly and family, friends, and competitiors have all commented on the quality of air. We have also taken steps of trying our best to maintain a sterile deck and have all of our athletes (& competitors) shower before entering the pool. This has helped us maintain excellent water quality and clarity.
Our facility has since become a model in which builders come to witness the results. We do beleive that we were one of the first pools built with… Read more »
If make-up water is added to the circulated water and not directly into the pool, then that new water is not only heated and treated chemically, but it too will pass by the UV bulbs. Chloramines can be oxidated that way. A good set-up is for make-up water to enter circulation before filtration. Then it mixes with pool water about to be filtered, then all of it passes the UV bulbs, then finally Chlorine is injected and it’s all circulated back into the pool. Straight-piping the water into the pool just introduces more chloramines.
I add here that with all the controls taken to provide safe water, chloramines still form. With that inevitability, my experience with the Evacuator is that… Read more »
Good stuff. I’m amazed this isn’t more widely known in our sport. I’ve needed an inhaler for years. Come to think of it, I just kind of accepted bad air as a given and didn’t realize why it was there. I can’t think of the last time I was able to get a full week of training in without having to stop at least once during practice and get out. Coach hates it, but I’d rather breathe and get scolded than tough it out and suffocate.
That evacuator thing is needed really bad in federal way! And oh my God if you’ve ever been in a great wolf lodge… There should be a law that requires them to fix their… Read more »
I direct and operate the Jenks Trojan Aquatic Center (site of 2012, ’13, and ’14 Central Section Region 8 Sectionals). The Paddock Evacuator was installed during construction as a purpose-built part of the design, the first system so installed. The entire HVAC system was designed to work with the Evacuator, and the Evacuator in turn affected the design of the pool itself. The gutters are at deck level (except end-walls), without the parapet or overhang that may trap more air (the parapet is usually 1′ above water). Therefore, the air flows directly over the top of the water to the suction ducts at the sides and one end of the pool. In the Jenks pool, the overhead supply vents direct… Read more »