It’s also the only place I ever had a competent swimming teacher.

Current thinking (a few quotes)

“Sweat contains nitrogen and ammonia, both of which can react with chlorine and reduce its effectiveness. That reaction also causes a chlorine smell — a clear indication, Knoop says, that all is not well at the pool. Urine, hair spray and suntan oil in the water can have the same effect. And people who don’t shower after going to the bathroom can increase the risk of fecal contamination.

“All the body oils funk up the filter system,” said Donald Hamel, administrator for the City of Detroit Environmental Health Services. Oil-clogged filters cannot properly circulate pool water, so it gets cloudy.

“When we don\’t shower properly, the residual dirt reacts with the chlorine in the pool to form chloramines, which are 40-60 % less effective than chlorine in destroying pathogens. The consequence is that either pools have to be maintained at higher concentrations of chlorine, or swimmers will risk getting sick from the water.
In indoor pools the chloramines evaporate and stay close above the water, and can irritate the eyes and throat. It may also damage the lung and trigger asthma, particularly in kids. A recent survey of nearly 2,000 students in Brussels revealed a stronger link between asthma and pool attendance than with accepted risk factors such as pet ownership or exposure to second-hand smoke.

” Each summer thousands of people become ill from disease-causing microorganisms in swimming pools and commercial water parks. The diseases include infection with a parasite called cryptosporidium (crip-toe-spo-RID-ee-um) and the infamous E. coli bacteria that causes many causes of food poisoning.

“Most are mild illnesses that involve diarrhea and stomach upsets. Some are more serious, like a 1998 outbreak E. coli outbreak at a water park in which seven children developed kidney failure and one died.

“There’s no dainty way to describe the cause. It’s fecal material. It usually gets into pool water from infants or young children who are just learning to control their bowels and often have bowel movements in the pool. The most dangerous kind is the nearly invisible stuff, watery diarrhea that spreads unnoticed throughout the pool. It often occurs in kids who are sick with E. coli, crypto, or other infections.>>>>>>>> Older children and adults are another source. Fecal material that remains on the body after using the bathroom washes off in the pool. That’s why many pools have “shower-first” rules

I like to swim laps and I have witnessed more and more people not even taking showers before entering a pool which bloggles my mind.

I noticed the same thing the first time I swam in the pool – such a nice gym with no soap…even my HS and community pools had soap, and we’re not exactly a rich town. I’ve never heard of a school rejecting money before – what is their rationale?

Here in Japan they don’t allow soap or shampoo to be used, since it tends to not be completely rinsed off and it gets in the water. I think rising off in plain water is fine. The only real problem in pools is fecal matter or open, bleeding wounds. Urine is relatively sterile. What it boils down to is that kids who aren’t toilet trained are the only real danger, and even there only to other kids or AIDS victims or grannies, unless they have hepatitis or the like. The CDC web site has a pool hygiene page, by the way. There’s not a lot of actual evidence of pools, filthy or otherwise, causing any problems.

A: I didn’t want to name names, but it was Candy Royer. She was actually my tennis teacher when I was a grad student and she is still a nice person. If MIT were in New Mexico, where I hope to be tomorrow (flying a two-seat airplane), we wouldn’t have to beg administrators to carry soap from wherever UPS drops it off into the showers… http://www.nmenv.state.nm.us/NMED_regs/other/7nmac18_1.html (did a Google search) says “Showers in sufficient number shall be provided with hot and cold water and soap”. Too bad those guys in New Mexico didn’t listen to all of the bright folks who commented above and explained how soap isn’t actually necessary.

there *is* an institutional ethic of ‘wash your hands’ in the dorms. it’s not like people say “well, the housing office won’t buy me any soap, so i guess i won’t use any”– it just sucks that this ethic comes at the expense of the students, not the administration. i’m a bit puzzled by the shower soap thing, though– candace royer is otherwise an eminently reasonable and extremely nice person, especially compared to the sh*tbag that she replaced.

Perhaps one strategy to get attention (whether it’s scientifically accurate or not) might be to say “handwashing is important to stopping infectious contamination and contagion, for example flu infections.” It’s kinda unbelievable that in a dorm environment (translate to “great hothouse for the spread of infection, lots of people, lots of shared/touchable surfaces, lots of food/eating, etc”) there isn’t an institutional ethic of “wash your hands.”

50 MILLION for a pool and they’ve no money for soap? It sounds as if they are into building whatever they can get the allumni and other donors to spring for but their focus includes only the majesty and grandeur of the physical plant and not anything about the users.

That said, bacterial contamination is probably not because of the missing soap. However their cheapness is likely to extend to purchase of pool chemicals.