Fecal Water Balance: It Happens Every Day

Yes, it’s more-than-rumored that California is preparing to legislate something close to massive overkill for what is now to be called a "FECAL ACCIDENT"! A frequent subject of humorous conversation during operator-training classes and one of the Pumproom Press’ questions in our Pool People Poll, Spring Issue, we’re now faced with new rules that make the various states’ codes more inconsistent than ever. The discovery of a ‘"brown trout", a "pool stool" or even a "baby-ruth floater" may be a shock to an unsuspecting breast-stroker in lane three, but — according to many medical authorities and most health departments — it's nothing to warrant a 911 call to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta!

A large California County's health department, quite serious about providing the best in protection for its swimming-pool patrons, has been rightfully concerned about a breakout of cryptosporidiosis (you know, the popular little worm-bearing cysts we all saw on Prime Time Live T.V. this month...). Their belated reaction to a documented fecal accident in 1988 and the diarrheic maladies which followed for the next month seems somewhat excessive, especially since any pool closing, with 10 ppm FAC for 24 hours, may be a hundred times more than necessary for most bacterial and viral diseases yet insufficient for a hazardous concentration of crypto. These "cysts", dealt with marginally by using chlorine, are so large that even filtration becomes an important factor in their removal. However, the three turnovers "required" will still leave at least 5% of the water un-filtered and fully contaminated. And the desired capture is less likely yet with the requested "clean", or freshly backwashed, filters...

Let’s look at some logical and hard-to-refute concepts bearing on the subject:

1. Close to a million public pools have been run throughout this century, many with equivalent organic loads and far less sanitation awareness or control than we have now, resulting in surprisingly few contributions to the outbreak of disease.

2. Professional sanitarians and their health departments across the country certainly haven’t "gotten it together" in any sort of agreement, where the rules vary from no action defined to demands for immediate pool draining and scrub-down. Meanwhile, their pools seem to be, for the most part, sufficiently sanitary.

3. In busy public facilities everywhere, a bacteriological and sometimes even physical equivalent of a "fecal accident" is introduced into the pool water every single day the pool is in use.

What about that last assertion? Well, just how much fecal material is really released into the pool by a thousand swimmers in the million-gallon wave pool, or a hundred or so toddlers in that few thousand gallons of wading-pool water? What amount, and from where? Now how can we be delicate in describing this stuff...? Let’s just call it cheek wash! Imagine all those kids hurriedly finishing the paperwork after a trip to the commode, rinsing the last into the pool water itself.

It’s not a pretty thought, but one physiologist estimates a tenth of a cubic centimeter of fecal material is rinsed into a pool by every bathing patron who enters the water! Naturally the more hygienic of us would contribute less, while others might introduce quite a bit more... In any case, for each 100 swimmers, ten cubic centimeters, or one large dingleberry’s worth, is released into our pristine pool water. Five hundred swimmers could easily match a very large one-time release of solids. And none of this solid organic material is ever scooped out of the pool as is the more obvious pool stool. There’s no fanfare, hoopla or sensationalism that’s so commonly attached to the classic floating discovery! It just stays in the pool, to be oxidized, sanitized and maybe even filtered — while the hazard to humans of this daily occurrence is, thank goodness, miniscule.

Let’s face it. Pathogens, including cryptosporidium, pseudomonas auruginosis and staphococcus, and, for sure, coliform, are going to be introduced, most of them every single day, into those busy pools! Maintaining an ORP of 750 millivolts or more — that’s equivalent to just half-a-part free, unstabilized, un-combined chlorine at a pH of 7.4 — will do what it’s always done; it will render the pool safe for human use.

In severe and highly unusual introductions of cystic pathogens, chlorine alone won’t do the job anyway even if you do happen to know it's there. One usually discovers the problem a week's incubation time later, finally indicating maybe he should have closed the pool last week! Closing the pool in any case after a "fecal accident" is a little like washing your hands for one meal a month, when you use your knife and fork anyway. Does it make any sense, then, to go overboard one or two days a season, disrupting aquatic programs and adding maintenance costs, if the cheekwash happens on those particular days to be lumped all in one spot? This editor thinks not.

The last time this writer witnessed a fecal accident, the kid said it was no accident. He said he did it on purpose! We sent the kid home, called time-out in the pool, scooped out the trout, poured a little liquid chlorine in the area for effect, then went back to swimming.

Swimming. Just like we all do every day, routinely withstanding the effects of a few dozen grams of human organic waste. It’s that very same organic matter that, if it happens to be visible, sends everybody scrambling for the showers and the mouthwash. Silly, isn’t it?

One environmental-health specialist summed it up best, saying "To avoid these hazards to health, all we really need is well managed water, well operated filters, and good operators... just plain well maintained pools!"

~kw

©1997 Professional Pool Operators of America