Thursday, February 11, 2010

A Chloramine Prevention Precursor:
Are You "Practicing" Healthy Swimming at Your Pool?

I am a believer in the benefits of social media and find it in its' various forms to be an increasingly invaluable tool to me in business. I have maintained a company page that many of you are aware of at twitter.com/sureh2o for some time now. Through that site I follow a number of other sites ("Tweeps"), some news related, some business and of course some related to swimming. It has been interesting to follow some well known swimmers like @daratorresswims, @NatalieCoughlin, @G_WeberGale, and @goldmedalmel (Mel Stewart), all of whom are past or current US Olympic Swim Team members and gold medal winners. Recently, I spotted a post on Mel Stewart's Twitter page (twitter.com/goldmedalmel) linked to a post on his blog entitled Chlorine and Pee Can Kill You, which got my attention. After reading his post and the referenced article, KEY Health Facts You Need to Know if You Have or Use a Pool, and a follow up post that provides the unique perspective of a competitive swimmers' urination on the "fly" experiences, Peeing in the Pool (with Video), I felt compelled to post a comment in reply.

I have commented on many articles in the past, but none with the response that my comments received from Mel Stewart. He received them with open arms, posting them verbatim in a follow up post on his blog (see my comments @ Chlorine and Urine can Kill, Part II). Mel didn't stop there. In the interest of his readers' personal knowledge and health, he invited me to write up a list of steps that can be employed at their facilities to help prevent the formation of chloramines to be included on his blog as a "guest post". The link for this post, what I called a "Chloramine Prevention Precursor", was posted on his blog in full at Chlorine and Human Secretions, THE FACTS. Take a quick look! You are probably already incorporating many, if not all of these steps into your operation, but how far are we going as Operators to cooperatively establish workable prevention protocol with the competitive groups that are using our facilities. Here's where relationship plays a vital role in assuring the "best practices" are not just in place, but are being PRACTICED. On behalf of Mel Stewart, I would encourage you to share his posts with your swim, water polo, synchro and other team coaches and parents in a cooperative effort to provide the healthiest environment possible for the participants and staff of your facility.

I want to publicly thank Mel for his commitment to swimmers and to healthful swimming by shedding light on the issue of chloramines and for presenting the opportunity for me to link the Pool Operator community with the Competitive Swimming world in an effort to inform and ensure the "practice" of healthy swimming in all of our facilities. Be Sure!

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

"Sliding" Into Home

This vid gives new meaning to the title expression and shows just how adaptable, and fun a tube slide can be as a vehicle for mass transit.
A must share!