Water quality hazard in our Swimming Pools

national | miscellaneous | other press Friday August 25, 2006 10:36 by Breda

Today's Examiner continues to highlight the hazards we may be exposed to at our local pools due to the lack of any testing or statutory body responsible for monitoring or compliance.

25 August 2006

They’ve made shellfish a protected species — but not you and me

By Pat Brosnan
YOU might not realise it, but every time you take the plunge in most of the swimming pools in the country, or plonk yourself in one of those spas, you are taking your life in your hands, and it’s not necessarily through drowning.

You could be infected by something potentially fatal, leading to Legionnaires’ disease, and there is no legislation to protect you from it.

In fact, there is no Government agency with responsibility for making sure the pool water is safe.

At the moment, shellfish are better protected in water than we are, but then shellfishing is a €40 million industry. New legislation will ensure that 14 bays are kept pollution-free so that oysters, mussels, clams, scallops and other shellfish are healthy and clean before they end up as an expensive dish.

But you and I could end up on a slab after a swim in a pool for all the Government cares, and while your next-of-kin might have grounds for a civil action against the local authority or the operator of the pool, you won’t be looking at any travel brochures at that stage.

I might add that despite the millions involved, the Irish Shellfish Association (ISA) had to bring the Government before the EU Commission because of its failure to implement a directive that would give special protection to areas where shellfish are grown.

They were given a choice of either putting it into force or facing massive fines.

At least there was a directive to be implemented. There would appear to be nothing to protect a person when he or she goes to a pool or spa.

You would be entitled to believe some government department would be responsible for the quality of the water and that it was inspected regularly. You would be completely wrong.

Nobody is responsible, and when the Irish Examiner contacted the obvious departments, the issue was passed out to the wing faster than Peter Stringer could passing a ball from a scrum.

The Department of Tourism, while it grant-aids pools, is not in charge of water quality, and suggested the Department of Health, which suggested the Health Services Executive, which suggested the Department of the Environment, which suggested the… Department of Health.

There’s no point in complaining to the HSE about the fact that it has nothing to do with this potential danger to the public, as there is no such complaints procedure about anything it does, or fails to do.

If you can hang on for another two years, provided the complaint isn’t life-threatening, you will be able to make a complaint about it.

But you will have to wait at least until 2007, a mere two years after the HSE was set up.

That’s when the HSE complaints system is planned to come into operation, but only if the Government first introduces new regulations. In two years, of course, there will be a different government in place, but if it’s anything like the present one, the HSE doesn’t have anything to worry about.

I suppose the fact that the HSE had no complaint against it was one of the reasons why Prof Brendan Drumm, its chief executive and reputedly the highest paid of all our public servants, was given a bonus of something like €32,000 after nine months on the job.

On the other hand, there’s no problem in claiming to have a clean record when there’s no way anybody can complain about you.

I don’t suppose Prof Drumm and his management team have any complaints about their salaries or perks. That was a matter well settled before the HSE took over.

Now, it would appear that even though taxpayers’ money is splashed out on pools by way of grants, the Department of Tourism is indifferent to the health of those same taxpayers.

So, it would seem, is every other department for the simple reason that there is no law which says the water in swimming pools and spas must be of an acceptable standard. You can’t get cancer in one of them because smoking is banned, but you can get Legionnaires’ disease or some other infection.

AND don’t think Legionnaires is rare in this country, like some tropical disease. In the last five years 34 cases have been reported here and in at least three instances, they proved to be fatal.

I am not saying they all happened because of using swimming pools and spas, but the incident last week in Donegal occurred because the bacteria which causes this disease was found in the spa pool at a hotel.

The person who contracted it wasn’t staying in the hotel but just used the pool.

The problem with spas is that the threat of bacteria such as legionella is far greater as the water is hotter and the volume is smaller.

Legionnaires’ disease is caused by a bacterium called legionella pneumophilia, and people catch it by inhaling small droplets of infected water suspended in the air.

To prevent it, apart from properly maintaining air-conditioning and industrial cooling systems, to which Legionnaires’ disease is linked, water must be treated and the system cleaned regularly. The bacterium normally lives in water, and the symptoms are similar to the flu.

You would imagine that the Department of the Environment would have a pivotal role in this area because so many thousands of people use swimming pools and spas every day of the week, as well as children during school term.

Department officials seem to jump up and down if there’s a fish-kill because somebody tipped a nasty load of waste into a local river.

Amazingly, they can’t do the same for polluted swimming pools or spas.

According to Jennifer Shorten of the Environmental Health Officers Association (EHOA), the big problem is that they do not have a statutory function. They can make recommendations, but they lack the necessary legal muscle to enforce them.

Stupidly, and without any apparent regard for the consequences, the Government has been deaf to calls by the EHOA in recent years for the introduction of legislation covering pools and spas.

They should not be any different from beaches where pollution is monitored and blue flags handed out where it’s deemed safe for the general public to go swimming.

Outside government agencies, it seems the only monitoring conducted is done by the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management (ILAM), but it’s not compulsory.

According to them, there is no specific legislation to ensure that more than 400 facilities are safe.

Because their white flag quality mark is not compulsory, only about 86 pools have it, but at least ILAM is encouraging the independent testing of water quality.

And remember the next time you’re tucking into a plateful of garlic mussels or scallops mornay, they could be healthier than you, even though they’re dead.