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Recreational Water Illness (RWI) has been a hot topic this past year. In fighting these stealthy germs, industry professionals use several approaches based on research, health department regulations and current Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommendations.
One of the most effective tools to prevent the threat of swimmer sickness is still the old-fashioned chlorine sanitizer. In fact, chlorine has a long history of effectively destroying water invaders. In London during the 1800s, more than 25,000 people died in less than a decade due to cholera from raw sewage in the River Thames. In 1855, London became the first city to treat sewage with chlorine. As a result, cholera cases were reduced to nearly zero. The use of chlorine for drinking water in the United States reduced cholera cases from 25,000 in 1900 to only 20 in 1960.
Because of its proven ability to disinfect, chlorine became popular for swimming pool use in the 1920s. In 2000, Life magazine called the use of chlorine as a disinfectant in water “one of the most important inventions of the last thousand years.”