MDHHS recognizes Healthy and Safe Swimming Week
LANSING, MI — The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) is encouraging residents to maximize the health benefits of swimming with healthy and safe habits. As part of these efforts, MDHHS is recognizing this week as Healthy and Safe Swimming Week.
In the past nine years, 100 individuals in Michigan have reported pool-related chemical illness while swimming. It’s important to keep sweat, pee, and poop out of swimming pools because they can combine with the chlorine and form chemicals that make our eyes red and trigger asthma attacks. The best prevention is showering before you enter the pool. Because some germs can survive for days – even in water treated with chlorine and other disinfectants – it’s important not to swim when you are sick.
In addition to preventing pool-related illnesses caused by germs in the water we swim in, it is also important to prevent pool-related injuries, such as drowning or those caused by mishandling pool chemicals. Here are some steps you can take to help keep your family safe and healthy this swimming season:
Keep germs out of the water:
Stay out of the water if you have diarrhea.
Shower before you get in the water.
Don’t pee or poop in the water and take your children on hourly bathroom breaks to keep them from doing the same: Every hour—everyone out!
Keep swimmers safe in the water:
Make sure everyone knows how to swim.
Use life jackets appropriately.
Provide continuous, attentive supervision close to swimmers.
Know CPR.
Use chemicals safely in your pools:
Read and follow directions on product labels.
Open chemical containers safely, using proper protective equipment, in a well ventilated area.
NEVER mix different pool chemicals with each other, especially chlorine products with acid. Add pool chemical to water, NEVER water to pool chemical.
Store pool chemicals securely.
For safety tips and more about preventing swimming illness and injury, visit www.cdc.gov/healthyswimming and www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html.
This article was printed in the May 29, 2016 – June 11, 2016 edition.
