Friday, May 31, 2002 | 11:11 a.m.
Las Vegans wanting to cool off in the water this summer might want to ask what lies beneath before they dive in at their community pool.
A recent check by the Sun of 288 Clark County Health District pool inspection records found that 77 percent of area community pools did not meet the minimum state requirements for pool disinfectant in the last 2 1/2 years.
The inspection records of pools and spas at several area hotels, health clubs and community centers, which included multiple inspections of some pools, showed 424 instances where they were not properly chlorinated, with more than 100 pools having more than one violation.
"You can't operate a pool without chlorine," said Lorraine Forston, senior environmental health specialist for the Health District. "It is the only thing that stands between an outbreak or illnesses."
Nevada requires all commercial pools to maintain chlorine or bromine levels between 1 to 5 parts per million, she said.
When levels are found below that, the health district requires the pools to immediately raise the chlorine levels to state standards. If they fall below 0.5 parts per million, health district inspectors will often force a pool or spa to close until it's at healthy levels, pool inspector Whitne Taylor said. They usually reopen within one to two hours, she said.
The health district inspects the county's 5,000 public pools -- run by resorts, apartment complexes, homeowner associations, health clubs and recreation departments -- once or twice a year, more often if there are problems or complaints.
Some pools are kept shut for days when the chlorine level is found too low. They include pools that do not have a manager on site to immediately raise the chlorine level or those that repeatedly show low chlorination, Taylor said. A health inspector must certify such pools as ready to reopen.
They take such drastic action, because a pool with little to no chlorine is a breeding ground for E. coli, giardia, shigella and cryptosporidium, said Sean Kaufman, health communications specialist for the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. This opens bathers up to skin, eye and ear infections, diarrhea, stomach cramping and even death, Kaufman said.
"Basically as a community bathtub, a pool is only as sanitary as the people using it," Forston said.
The CDC has documented more than 15,000 cases of recreational water illnesses this year. It takes chlorine only one second to kill E. coli, but without chlorine the germ is deadly.
In a 1998 outbreak at a White Water park in Atlanta, one boy died and several were left with permanent kidney damage after swallowing E. coli-infected pool water.
The health district has had a few minor complaints of possible recreational water illnesses, but never linked to a public pool, health district public information officer Jennifer Sizemore said.
The closest call was at Black Mountain Aquatic Community Pool in Henderson. In August 2001 a family of four all came down with giardia after swimming there, according to an inspection file. But epidemiologist Donna Riddle determined the family contracted the pathogen from Lake Mead, not the community pool.
Other complaints at Black Mountain illustrate the balance pool managers try to strike between maintaining a healthy pool and keeping the pool open for customers.
About the time of the giardia case, Black Mountain had other complaints of illness, filed within a week of an accident involving bodily waste -- the No. 1 cause of an outbreak of illness.
State law requires that a pool be superchlorinated after the offensive material is removed and that the pool go through at least one turnover cycle. Forston said she recommends a pool wait six to 24 hours before reopening.
That guideline was followed in the 2001 incident, but Henderson Parks and Recreation policy requires only 30 minutes in many cases, depending on the severity of the accident.
"Honestly, if we followed the health district recommendations, we would be closed all summer," said Debra Haskell, information specialist for Henderson.
Sometimes the weather works against the most vigilant systems, environmental health specialist Mary Hahn said, and a few citations do not necessarily indicate a health risk.
Sudden changes in temperature can affect chlorination. Some pools also use other disinfection systems that the health district doesn't measure.
That could be behind instances of too little chlorine showing up at several Strip and off-Strip resorts, including Bellagio, Rio, Caesars Palace, Monte Carlo, Luxor, Aladdin, Las Vegas Hilton and the Hard Rock, Hahn said.
The chlorination system at Bellagio -- like several of the other hotels -- is computerized and checked automatically every two hours, assistant pool manager Brent Thomas said.
"I know we are all on top of it out here," he said. "If there is a problem it is taken care of immediately."
Officials from Bellagio, Caesars Palace, the Aladdin and the Luxor all said that their pools are up to code and that they have onsite certified pool operators monitoring the water. Calls to the other hotels were not returned.
Health clubs such as 24 Hour Fitness and Las Vegas Athletic Clubs have had several complaints since 2000 about the quality of the pools and spas, but for the most part inspection reports show passing grades. Spas at several locations had too much chlorine, rather than too little.
The biggest problem for the health district are pools at apartment complexes or home associations that have off-site pool operators and cannot immediately fix the problem, inspectors said.
"It's an ongoing battle with some of the operators," Taylor said.
The best maintained pools in the Las Vegas Valley, according to inspection records, belong to Clark County and Wet 'n Wild.
"I would swim in those pools, and that is saying something," pool inspector Valerie Fidler said.
Even when pools keep up with health district's guidelines, that may not be enough. Some new strands of germs, such as cryptosporidium, are chlorine-resistant and can take up to a week to die in even the best maintained pools, Kaufman said.
He advises patrons to do their part to promote healthy swimming by avoiding the water if they have recently had stomach illnesses, washing hands after using the rest room and not swallowing the water. Parents with young children should take their kids to the bathroom often. Babies should swim only in swim diapers or rubber pants, and parents should change these often.
"We are trying to establish a team effort between patrons and people who maintain the pool," Kaufman said. "If people who maintain the pool don't properly do their job, then the patron is at risk. If a patron is sick or has diarrhea, they are endangering everyone in the pool regardless of how well it is maintained."
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