A swimming pool is rarely simply water. It’s a closely managed aquatic ecosystem, held in precarious steadiness by chemistry, cultural norms, and care. Without therapy, swimming pools explode with algae, micro organism, protozoa, and fungi, to not point out bugs. Chlorination, the usual therapy worldwide, reshapes that multispecies world: it kills off some life kinds whereas permitting chlorine-resistant ones to persist, reorganizing microbial relations and subtly altering swimmers’ personal microbiomes.
I really like being within the water. My good friend Ingrid teases that it’s my pleased place as a result of I grew up close to the coast. Whatever the explanation, I attempt to swim wherever I journey. This summer time that meant laps in Copenhagen, Hamburg, and Amsterdam. Traveling this manner turns swimming right into a type of ethnographic follow. Each pool is not only a leisure web site however a multispecies world, with its personal norms, infrastructures, and microbial politics. The water might look the identical, however what counts as “clean,” “safe,” or “pleasant” varies remarkably from place to position.
Denmark’s Lesson
Of all of the locations I’ve swum, Denmark stands out. In Copenhagen, I frequented a public pool in a working-class a part of city. Nothing fancy, only a neighborhood facility paid for by the municipal authorities (Københavns Kommune). Entry was free, the amenities had been as good because the modest personal membership I pay to swim at in Nashville, and the water high quality felt exceptional.
It took a couple of weeks of each day visits to be taught the Danish pool guidelines and norms. No cell telephones for privateness causes, however with the spillover profit that nobody was scrolling by the pool. No footwear are allowed past the doorway—they’re taken off and positioned on a rack. One ought to deliver (not put on) a clear bathing go well with. But most putting are the strict norms round showering. Upon getting into the altering room, indicators (see Figure 1) instruct swimmers to bathe fully and bare, utilizing cleaning soap and shampoo, paying specific consideration to these areas the place micro organism accumulate: hair, underarms, genitals, buttocks, and toes. Sunscreen and fragrance shouldn’t be reapplied after showering. My linguist companion Mareike identified one thing I may need missed: the Danish phrase on the signal (husk, “remember”) frames hygiene not a lot as a command however extra as a collective understanding. There isn’t any formal policing, however employees flow into and older males gently implement the foundations. A shy teenager who tries to bathe in swimming trunks shall be informed to take them off. Only after a radical wash do you set in your clear bathing go well with.
The logic is easy: in the event you wore your swimming trunks into the bathe, all of your genital micro organism can be transferred onto the go well with after which into the pool. By insisting on thorough soapy washing, the Danes cut back the microbial load earlier than anybody touches the water. The result’s noticeable. The pool water was solely frivolously chlorinated—maybe 1-2 components per million, about half that of my pool in Nashville. It felt nice, I might swim with my eyes open, and I couldn’t style the sunscreen and fragrance that usually plagues my swims.
This system appeared higher not just for swimmers’ consolation but in addition for our our bodies. With the microbial load decreased upstream, swimmers take in much less chlorine and inhale fewer disinfectant by-products. The Bavnehøj Friluftsbad in Copenhagen exemplifies an method to microbial administration based mostly not on chemical domination however on cultural norms and social enforcement. Denmark, I concluded, has a lot to show us, and never nearly swimming however about provisioning well being and wellbeing extra broadly.
Chlorine as Purification Fantasy
What I skilled in Copenhagen contrasts with Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Nashville, the place swimming pools depend on heavier chlorination. Unlike most outside swimming pools within the U.S., these in Germany and the Netherlands require one to bathe earlier than getting into, however that is normally a perfunctory washing with bathing fits on. I at all times thought the Germany and Dutch swimming pools should be actually clear, however that was earlier than I swam in Denmark.
To perceive what’s at stake, it helps to recall Bruno Latour’s (1993) perception that modernity rests on an phantasm of purification, the try and separate nature from tradition, human from nonhuman. Chlorinated swimming pools are a microcosm of recent hygienic modernity: the fantasy of a human-only area carved out of messy microbial ecologies. Yet such modernist purification is a categorization scheme, not the best way the world truly emerges. Pools are hybrid assemblages of the human and nonhuman, the organic and chemical: chlorine-resistant organisms persist; human secretions produce chemical reactions in touch with chlorine; hair, sunscreen, and pores and skin cells flow into within the water.
Hypochlorous acid kinds when chlorine dissolves in water. It penetrates cell partitions and disrupts microbial enzymes and DNA, successfully eliminating micro organism like E. coli, viruses together with norovirus, and parasites similar to Giardia. Chlorine additionally reacts with natural matter (similar to sweat and urine) to kind haloacetic acids and chloramines, the risky compounds that give swimming pools their acquainted chlorine scent. (For swimmers, it’s best to not dwell on the supply of the odor.) These compounds trigger minor eye and pores and skin irritation, however they will additionally set off respiratory issues and have been related to bladder and reproductive well being dangers (Goodman and Hays 2008; Richardson 2021).
Michelle Murphy (2017) reminds us that molecules will not be remoted abstractions. Chlorine is not only “Cl” in a desk however an agent enmeshed into infrastructures, inequalities, and our bodies. Deployed as a common disinfectant, chlorine volatilizes within the air, concentrates in swimming pools, travels downstream in wastewater. Bathers take in chlorinated water via the pores and skin, mucous membranes, and inhalation. This modifications microbiomes — not solely killing pathogens but in addition reshaping pores and skin flora and presumably intestine microbiota by way of ingestion.
Chlorine doesn’t simply kill; it units the circumstances of chance through which lifeforms thrive. It retains E. coli and Cryptosporidium at bay, whereas permitting chlorine-resistant microbes to outlive (e.g., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Legionella in biofilms). It reorganizes relations amongst species, our bodies, and infrastructures. Donna Haraway (2008) would possibly name this a type of disciplined companionship: chlorine deciding which microbes we tolerate, which we eradicate, and the way we coexist in chemical intimacy.
Nicholas Shapiro (2015) makes use of the time period chemosphere for the clouds of commercial chemistry through which we stay. Pools, in that sense, are microcosms of a broader situation. Chlorine circulates via pumps and our bodies, connecting municipal budgets to petrochemical provide chains, and human leisure to chemical warfare on microbes. The pool is a chemosocial assemblage—directly leisure, regulatory, and respiratory.
Public swimming pools are intensely managed areas. Lifeguards dip check strips to verify compliance with World Health Organization and CDC requirements. The pH and chlorine ranges are logged, regulated, and enforced. These routines embody a kind of microbiopolitics (Paxson 2012): the governance of human–microbe relations via norms and applied sciences.
The Danish instance reveals a unique calculus. Rather than counting on chemical overkill to sanitize after the very fact, it minimizes microbial enter by making hygiene an expression of shared belief and embodied cooperation.
Conclusion
Swimming swimming pools reveal a lot about how societies think about well being, hygiene, and neighborhood. Chlorination is not only about disinfection; it’s about how we stay with microbes. Yet, swimming swimming pools additionally perpetuate the fantasy of water as a human-only medium, cleansed of microbial life.
For anthropologists and public well being practitioners, swimming pools provide a productive web site for considering via the politics of prevention versus therapy, particular person versus collective accountability, and chemical versus cultural options to well being challenges. The Danish mannequin presents greater than a technical various to heavy chlorination; it’s a totally different mode of administration that emphasizes cooperation over domination. Rather than combating microbes within the water with chemical warfare, Denmark prevents their introduction within the first place via collective motion. The water thus turns into a medium of shared accountability, not merely a chemically patrolled frontier.
The classes lengthen past swimming swimming pools to broader questions on how we design public well being interventions. Too typically, we attain for technological fixes (filters, disinfectants, antibiotics) when cultural coordination would possibly obtain the identical ends with fewer negative effects. The Danish pool mannequin means that generally essentially the most subtle answer is essentially the most social one: embedding well being practices in collective norms quite than particular person compliance with chemical techniques.
References
Goodman, Michael and Sean Hays. 2008. “Asthma and Swimming: A Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Asthma 45(8): 639-647.
Haraway, Donna. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Murphy, Michelle. 2017. “Alterlife and Decolonial Chemical Relations.” Cultural Anthropology 32(4): 494–503.
Paxson, Heather. 2012. The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Richardson, Susan D. 2021. “Tackling unknown disinfection by-products: Lessons learned.” Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters 2: 100041.
Shapiro, Nicholas. 2015. “Attuning to the Chemosphere: Domestic Formaldehyde, Bodily Reasoning, and the Chemical Sublime.” Cultural Anthropology 30(3): 368–393.
World Health Organization. 2006. Guidelines for Safe Recreational Water Environments, Volume 2: Swimming Pools and Similar Environments. Geneva: WHO.