Water quality of swimming pools in Athens area

In this work a representative sample of 11 indoor and outdoor swimming pools were investigated with respect to critical physicochemical, health-related, microbiological and technical parameters. These pools were used either as competition (athletic) or as recreation pools. Useful correlations of the above parameters were deduced and properly attributed. Results were checked against well-established standards, such as DIN 19643, showing poor compliance with them in all parameters investigated. Thus, compliance for health-related parameters varied from 0 to 100%, for physical and chemical parameters from 20 to 100%, for microbiological parameters from 45 to 91% and for technical parameters from 27 to 36%. The most critical parameters implicated for poor water quality were Redox potential, turbidity and the appearance of certain opportunistic pathogens ( Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ). These were attributed to poor process design of pools and lack of sufficient vocational training of the ...