Here Are Some Of The Most Common Swimming Pool Myths Explained

• Posted on HDNEditor
• in Home Outdoor
• on July 7, 2021
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Can you tell a myth from reality? How sure are you?

There are popular misconceptions about fibreglass swimming pools that have been passed around from one kid to another during the summer. How many of them are lies parents tell their children to get them to behave? How many actually have some truth behind them? This article will expose some of the most common swimming pool myths and finally separate fact from fantasy.

Myth #1: You must wait one hour after eating before you swim, or you’ll get cramps.

This popular “momism” has made its way across the whole world, and for a good reason. It sounds like it makes sense.

When you eat, blood flows from your muscles to your stomach to help your body digest. Jumping in the pool right after a meal can wreck digestion, as you aren’t giving your body the time it needs to break down your food.

It’s possible to cramp your muscles if you overwork them. Sure. But this rarely happens, and cramps can happen at any time, without any warning, and for lots of different reasons.

Floating lazily in a pool isn’t enough for most people to trigger cramps. Most people aren’t furiously training at their swimming pools, either. Since swimming is a repetitive activity, you can get cramps when you overuse your muscles in the same patterns. It has very little to do with how much you eat.

It’s easy to prevent cramps altogether. Don’t eat till you’re full, and don’t overuse your muscles while you swim. If you feel soreness in your arms and legs, take a break.

Myth #2: Chlorine kills everything nasty in the pool.

Chlorine is used in swimming pools everywhere to prevent waterborne diseases from spreading. It’s an important pool sanitizer.

But it’s not as powerful as most people think it is. Recreational water illnesses (RWI), such as Cryptosporidium, aren’t killed by chlorine at all. These RWIs commonly cause problems such as infections and stomach upsets. These stomach upsets get chalked up to food poisoning instead of germs in the swimming pool and go ignored.

You can even get RWIs by simply breathing in the mists or aerosols from contaminated swimming pools. You can avoid RWIs by drying your ears after you swim and by keeping your mouth closed so you don’t accidentally swallow any pool water. Chlorine isn’t a fix-all.

Myth #3: Peeing in swimming pools isn’t dangerous.

Swimming pools can tolerate pee in the pool water—uup to a limit. If too many people pee in a pool, you actually have a serious health hazard on your hands.

Urine contains uric acid, which combines with chlorine to form some dangerous stuff. It forms trichloramine, which is also known as nitrogen trichloride, along with cyanogen chloride. Trichloramine causes respiratory complications when inhaled, and cyanogen chloride affects your body’s ability to use oxygen.

The doses of each are tolerable when a single person pees in a pool, but that’s not the case in most situations. They can be severely harmful in high concentrations, and most people can inhale them during water splashes or swallow them by accident.

The chlorine interacts with urine to form something more dangerous than its individual components. That’s where adding more chlorine to a pool fails to fix the problem and makes things worse instead.

Always ensure you shower and pee before you take a swim. Educate yourself on why and how chlorine works to understand its limitations. Have a zero-tolerance pee policy for your pool and let people know it.

Myth #4: A pool that looks clean is clean.

Most swimming pools develop algae and cloudy water when the algae begin producing ammonia in the pool.

So the most commonly held idea of a clean pool is a sparkling, clean, transparent pool. But it’s never that simple. There are lots of contaminants that can ravage your pool while still making your waters appear pristine. Just because you don’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.

And improperly balanced chemical levels in pools can give rise to bacterial overgrowth. These can wreck the pool’s internal structure and harm the people that swim inside it. You never know what’s inside your pool until you use the proper chemical kits to test and measure everything in it.

Myth #5: There is no chlorine in saltwater pools.

This is a common misconception, even among saltwater pool owners.

Saltwater pools don’t require you to physically add chlorine to the water. They create their own chlorine with the help of a saltwater chlorine generator. Table salt has the chemical name NaCl, of which Na is the sodium and Cl is the chloride.

Chlorine generators have blades. These blades are coated with ruthenium or iridium. They electrically charge the water and split the NaCl to create individual chlorine molecules. You have to worry about chlorine levels in all saltwater pools and regularly test levels to make sure your pool is properly balanced.

Myth #6: You don’t sweat while swimming, so you don’t need to drink more water.

Swimming is unique in many ways, and it can be an intense full-body exercise when you put in the effort.

Most people can swim for hours and not notice an ounce of sweat on their foreheads.

The pool does a good job of cooling you and absorbing any sweat your body produces in an instant.

This has led many to believe that you don’t sweat while swimming.

But the moment you wear a swim cap, you’ll notice the condensation of sweat forming inside the cap. Sweating is reduced but never completely stops. It’s the main way your body dispenses heat to keep things running at peak condition. You won’t develop typical dehydration symptoms such as dry skin or a dry mouth while you swim.

There’s too much water in your immediate environment. But the fact is, people can lose just as much water swimming as they can running. It’s simply harder to notice, making regular hydration a must for all swimmers.

Keep a water bottle handy, and treat swimming just like any other physical activity.