SWIMMING POOL SANITATION 
JACK J. HINMAN, JR. 
The swimming pool, being really a sort of common bath, rapid- 
ly departs from a sanitary condition, unless prompt and adequate 
measures are taken to maintain a reasonable degree of purity in 
the water. Moreover, since various types of intestinal infections, 
infections of the respiratory system, eye and ear infections, 
gonorrheal infections and skin infections have been traced to 
the waters of swimming pools, the protection of the bathers by 
means of proper treatment of the water and rigid inspection of 
all entrants into the pool is essential to safety. 
The supervision of preliminary soap shower baths is a factor 
capable of greatly reducing the burden on the water purification 
apparatus and also capable of reducing the amount of chemical 
treatment necessary. If the pool is carelessly supervised it is 
possible for the bathers to make it an unpleasant and perhaps an 
unsafe place. 
The construction of the pool room and the tank are features 
of importance, of course, since they make cleaning easy or diffi- 
cult and to a certain extent determine the habits of the patrons. 
Convenient toilet facilities, convenient showers in good repair 
and furnished with an ample supply of warm water and a clean 
pathway will aid the bathers in entering the pool in reasonably 
clean condition. Provision of a visitor’s gallery which allows the 
exclusion of persons wearing street shoes is highly desirable. 
The manner in which suits and towels are handled is of consid- 
erable importance. Washing is not always sufficient to kill the 
organisms causing skin diseases, a fact which may require steam 
sterilization to be practiced. To be sure, careless handling of the 
cleaned suits and towels may undo the work of sterilization and 
leave them in as bad a state as ever. 
However, the matters which are of greatest interest have to 
do with the pool water itself. Proper construction makes it 
easier to maintain the pool in a clean condition and proper super- 
vision tends to reduce the contamination of the water, especially 
the more dangerous contamination from bathers carrying patho- 
genic organisms. 
The State University of Iowa has two pools; one of 61,200 
