Red Eyes or Irritated Nose or Throat After Swimming? Blame the Pee, Poop, and Sweat!
To help protect swimmers’ health, chlorine is commonly added to the water to prevent the spread of germs and outbreaks. But chlorine can also combine with what comes out of or washes off of swimmers’ bodies, such as, pee, poop, sweat, dirt, skin cells, and personal care products, such as deodorant and makeup). This causes two problems:
- It decreases the amount of chlorine available to kill germs.
- It creates chemical irritants called chloramines (“chlor,” short for chlorine, and “amines,” compounds that contain nitrogen).
Healthy pools and other places where we swim in chlorinated water (for example, water playgrounds) don’t have a strong chemical smell. If you smell “chlorine” at the place you swim, you are probably smelling chloramines. Chloramines in the water can turn into gas in the surrounding air. This is particularly a problem in indoor pools, which often aren’t as well-ventilated as outdoor pools. The chloramines that form in the chlorinated water we swim in are different from the chloramine that is sometimes used to treat drinking water.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)