The state of public pool water quality in Australia - The Facts:
___________________________________________________________
Asthma onset in pre-school children.
The link between the onset of Asthma in pre-school children and chlorinated swimming pools has long been established in overseas scientific studies, where chlorine concentrations used are much lower than in Australia. Excessive chlorine and high bather loads lead to dangerous concentrations of toxic gases at the water surface, referred to as Disinfection By Products (DBP’s, Trihalomethanes, Trichloramines).
Australia has amongst the highest prevalence of Asthma in the world, with 2.7 million Australians diagnosed representing 11% of our population. Asthma causes an annual death toll of 424 deaths in 2023, 65 of those were children, as well as 33,000. hospital visits per annum as per Asthma Australia.
Cryptosporidium outbreaks
Since 2024, an explosion of crypro outbreaks were recorded across Australia, exceeding long term averages by orders of magnitude. The vast majority of these outbreaks are preventable, if standards had been applied, and pool water quality was adequately monitored.
Public Pools and the absence of engineering design standards
No regulatory design standard exists in Australia for public pool water treatment, resulting in lowest costs procurement of new aquatic facilities, and no ramifications for pool companies building delivering below-fit-for-purpose work, which leads to long term pool water quality problems, excessive operating costs, high maintenance and repairs costs. The entire aquatic industry is built on a false economy of inferior pool water treatment systems, excessive use of toxic chemicals and prohibitively expensive secondary treatment solutions which often make matters worse.
Government’s systemic failure
In the absence of qualifications and collaboration, each of the eight states and territories in Australia, maintain widely varying guidelines to govern public pool water quality. This is not only non-sensical, inefficient, cost prohibitive, it is testament to a toxic culture when ‘authorities’ cannot be questioned. By contrast, the USA with it a population of 335 million people, requires only ONE guideline, the Model Aquatic Health Code (MAHC). The US code – whilst not perfect – is far superior to any of the Australian guidelines.
Industry conflicts of interest
The commercial entanglements of the aquatic industry with regulatory authorities and publicly funded industry bodies in Australia, is cause of concern where participants knowingly and blatantly are keeping each other’s secrets and commercial interests in tact. Healthy Pool Water has sought to collaborate proactively with many participants, but have been met with denial of challenges, deflection and defensiveness whilst no other participant in the industry has made any effort to adequately explain the proven realised public health risks for children.
Once you watch the water, you cannot unsee the risks
What’s more is that the solutions are both simple and affordable, and bad actors within industry and government are self-exposing their agenda over time.
