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Login Here Signup Here Signup using FacebookSo, swimming laps is my absolute favorite form of exercise. I was thinking about it though, and I go out of my way to eat like 99.999% organic food, use natural, chemical-free personal care and cleaning products, etc…. and then I submerge myself in a pool full of harsh chemicals every other day. I wonder what the health implications of being in a chlorinated pool a few hours a week are. Well, until I can convince the gym to get a salt water system (Hah!) i guess i’ll just have to deal.
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i guess all I could say is when it’s warm go to the beach instead. Do you live near one?
I haven’t done too much research about this, but I’ve heard that saline pools are better for you than chlorinated ones. I swim at a 24-hour fitness that has saline pools – the major difference I find is in my skin and hair – my skin isn’t as dry or itchy and my hair doesn’t dry out and change colors. It might be worth looking in to.
swimming in chlorine is rough, one of the reasons i don’t do it as much as i used to. i saw what it did to my swimsuit and wondered what it was doing to me! i think if you are raw that you can be more sensitive to the environment so i wonder if i would be more sensitive now.
actually seattle has a saline pool and it is always super-crowded unfortunately and it’s only open for the summer. the lake is only swimmable for 2-3 months. so i see your dilemma.
i saw what it did to my swimsuit and wondered what it was doing to me!
Nicely put bitt
I have this problem with my daughter going to summer camp. All of the instructors think that I am crazy, but I just don’t see the advantage in swimming or bathing for that matter in the most toxic substance on earth. You saw what it did to your bathing suit, I wish the government could only be so kind and stop adding it to the water supply. GEEESH>
Hubby Chris went to the local spa to get some down time in the jaquzzi, they had just cleaned it out and they put new chemicals in it. Well, he stayed in for half an hour and it burned all the hairs off his body!! He is a hairy guy, but now he has silky smooth skin with no hair. His whole body was bright red and he was wheezing like crazy when he got home. They must have put the wrong amount of chemicals into the jaquzzi.
I have always been ‘sensitive’ to cholrine. I get headaches and feel like I am going to be sick if I get into a chlorinated pool. I wish so much that people just used salt!
I know someone who goes swimming in the pools in building sites. He finds open sites, well ones that he can get into, and when it rains the foundations that have been dug out fill up like a pool and that’s where he swims! He also eats meat out of the dumpster but that’s another story, ahem…
This topic tortures me – we just joined a pool since our daughter LOVES to swim. It’s a chlorinated pool. We’ve tried two small lakes and found that those became a chemical soup of sunscreen and who knows what else, not having a lot of movement of the water. I know a little girl who died when she was five from a bacteria she picked up in a lake and that also weighs heavily on my mind, it’s rare, but it just goes to show that there are dangers other than chlorine including drowning, which happened to another friend’s child. We try to be so chemical free in every other way that I’m hoping that will outweigh any damage the pool could cause.
There is an alternative to chlorine called ozonation or ozone treatement.
http://swimming.about.com/od/allergyandasthma/a…
http://www.snwa.com/html/wq_treatment_ozonation…
Apparently if you search around there are some public swimming places that do this to their pool. This could be an option for your home pool or jacuzzi.
I won’t go in a pool if I can smell the chlorine even before I get near the pool. We have a cute little pool in our apartment building and they haven’t been chlorinating it yet this summer because not a lot of people have been using it and you can only slightly smell the chlorine when you are in the water so I have been taking short dips in it (not my hair though!). My bikini nor I smell like chlorine when I get out so I am not that concerned about it so far. Hopefully they leave it that way and don’t go and overdo it! A friend of ours complained to his landlord that their was too much chlorine in their apartment pool water and they landlord cut down on the chlorine – so maybe complain too!
If you can find a hot springs that has a salinated pool that is a good bet too. They might be hard to find but the alternatives are there – you just have to search around.
Another thing to know too is that direct sunlight hitting the pool water will kill the bacteria that people try to get rid of with chlorine. I think that is why they haven’t been chlorinating our little apartment pool – it gets lots of direct sunlight. So if your home pool is getting hit with lots of direct sun you probably won’t have to worry too much about adding a bacteria killer.
But yeah, chlorine is basically bleach (we had another thread on this under Health and Beauty somewhere you might want to take a look for that) – do you really want to soak in that? Chlorine is a carinogen.
heck in world war 2 they used chlorine in its gas state to kill people (from what I understand it basically burns you lungs and throat on contact.)
see in austin we have the deep eddy pool, which is fed from the natural springs, and then lakes and other various natural places to swim in… but it isn’t practical during the week since i have class everyday and work several times a week. so i don’t really have an easy solution, because it’s so convenient to just walk across the street to the campus gym and work out after class. i wish it wasn’t so! and dang i REALLY wish i lived near the ocean… mmmmm…. the beach. i need a vacation lol.
i have been in jacuzzis and spas with bromine and with ozonation. so nice you don’t smell gross afterwards.
kelley after coffee, swimming was the hardest thing to give up! i was an avid swimmer 2 miles a day 5 days a week and usually a quick swim the sixth day… My shoulders where starting to gve me trouble so i alternated with yoga….what i noticed was, my over all health improved, not having that chlorine seep into my pores not only improved my skin and hair, but my eyes and ears felt better too and i used goggles! i would wheeze occationally to and my sinuses would burn constantly….yoga quiets my mind and relaxes me swimming made me tired( what i used to call a “good” tired)with all i do during the day and all i want to do in life i want to be energizes by my work out not drained by it! if i could afford my own ionized lap pool i would be tempted but i have to set limits for myself!
yes, omsahnti , same here, I just can t go anymore, now my nose triples in size, it gets pretty horrible and… I love to swim… NOw I do loads of yoga but still I miss it…At the moment I m even having trouble with the showers, do they put chlorine in london tap water too?
my pool is salinated as opposed to filled with chlorine, which is perfectly natural and non-toxic. try finding a salinated pool in your area?