Going from steamroom to pool repeatedly at the gym - am I overreacting?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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So I finally decided today that I’m probably going to say something to the gym management about this, but I wanted to hear what some other people think first.

Not many people at my gym swim. My wife and I have almost never waited for a lane. What people do do, though, is sit in the poolside steamroom until they are nice and dripping with sweat and then walk out and jump straight into the pool. They then repeat the process god knows how many times. They’re usually doing it when we get there and still doing it when we leave, anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes later.

Now I’m no rocket surgeon, but the steamroom seems like a perfect breeding ground for bacteria to me. It’s around 110 degrees fahrenheit and wet as a rainforest. I also remembering reading on the CDC website that it takes the chlorine in a public pool about an hour to kill any nasties that find their way in there.

Am I overreacting or should I alert the gym management to this practice? The showers are about 10 steps away, so I would hope that they would encourage people to rinse off there.

2

110 degrees? You sure? That seems awful low for a steamroom. An hour to kill nasties in a chlorinated public pool? Sure about that, too? That doesn’t sound right either. Even if true, though, the dilution factor will keep you safe. This came up a coupla years ago when Greg Louganis (spelling?) hit his head on the diving board during a dive and bled into the pool. Louganis is HIV+, yet there was no concern. So yeah, you’re overreacting.

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[QUOTE=Malienation]
This came up a coupla years ago when Greg Louganis (spelling?) hit his head on the diving board during a dive and bled into the pool. Louganis is HIV+, yet there was no concern. So yeah, you’re overreacting.
[/QUOTE]

HIV is a virus. I’m more concerned with bacteria, fungus, that kind of thing.

I could be wrong about the 110 degrees (I was in there once and it was awhile back, but 110 is the number I seem to recall) but the 1 hour is straight off of the CDC website. I’ll see if I can find a link.

Here we go - http://www.cdc.gov/healthyswimming/why.htm

RWI is “recreation water illness”.

4

My gym has a sign up that you need to shower before you enter the pool. Sounds like these people are breaking a standard rule regardless of whether they’ve been in the steam room or not.

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[QUOTE=Cisco]
HIV is a virus. I’m more concerned with bacteria, fungus, that kind of thing.

I could be wrong about the 110 degrees (I was in there once and it was awhile back, but 110 is the number I seem to recall) but the 1 hour is straight off of the CDC website. I’ll see if I can find a link.

Here we go - http://www.cdc.gov/healthyswimming/why.htm

RWI is “recreation water illness”.
[/QUOTE]
Eh. You’re still overreacting, and, I might add, bleeding all of the joy out of making the jump from a hot steamroom to a cold pool. People do that for the sheer sensual thrill of it. You’re probably the only couple who cares about this, btw. That being the case, what do you expect the management to do? Piss everyone else off by coming up with some inane rule to satisfy one fussy couple? Everyone will likely ignore the rule anyway. And hate you.

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[QUOTE=phouka]
My gym has a sign up that you need to shower before you enter the pool. Sounds like these people are breaking a standard rule regardless of whether they’ve been in the steam room or not.
[/QUOTE]

That’s probably not just a gym rule; it’s usually a local health ordinance. And if a health inspector happens by and notes that people are not showering before entering the pool, the gym can get fined. Plus, the inspectors upon seeing this will usually do a more thorough inspection, and can generally find something that gets the pool temporarily closed.

It’s a swimming pool, not a bathtub. Unless the pool management is regularly overtreating with chemicals, this is the sort of thing that causes pool water to be cloudy and dirty. It’s unpleasant to swim in.

The OP can ask the pool manager if there isn’t a health ordinance that covers this sort of thing. Don’t bother asking the lifeguards; they won’t know. But the pool or facility manager should know very well what the deal is. Alternatively, the OP could check into local health ordinances, and report it to the appropriate agency – someone dropped a dime on the Y that I swim at, because of the perfume slick that the watercize classes exuded into the water. It got the pool closed for a week while the Y had to empty and scrub it, and they then enforced the “showers required” ordinances (for about a year).

7

This happened at the pool I used to swim at. I stopped once I realized the water was murky enough I couldn’t see the lane lines clearly on the bottom of the 4’ deep lap pool…

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Are these people perhaps showering before going in the steam room? I’m not a pool health expert, but that seems like a reasonable course of action to me.

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Here’s a cite from my area:

St. Louis City Ordinance 65567

Wherein you might note:

It’s not left as an option that you don’t have to shower because it’d upset your enjoyment of quenching yourself after a sauna, or because you showered at some previous point in time. You have to take a shower, because that’s what the lawmakers decided you had to do.

Also, sweat is one of the things that the chlorine is in the pool to deal with. If lots of sweaty people use the pool as their bathtub, then the pool has to use more chlorine, which is costly. And when they’re using more chlorine and there aren’t lots of sweaty people, then everyone gets to enjoy that burning eyes sensation from excess chlorine.

The chlorine needs to be adjusted for the number of people using the pool for exercise or recreation; not for the number of people using the pool as a bathtub.

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[QUOTE=Malienation]
This came up a coupla years ago when Greg Louganis (spelling?) hit his head on the diving board during a dive and bled into the pool. Louganis is HIV+, yet there was no concern.
[/QUOTE]

There was no concern because he didn’t tell them at that time he was HIV+

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[QUOTE=Lightray]
Here’s a cite from my area:

St. Louis City Ordinance 65567

Wherein you might note:

c. Posting of Regulations - Suitable placards embodying the above personal regulations and instructions and those relating to towels and suits shall be conspicuously posted in the dressing rooms, offices and swimming area.

It’s not left as an option that you don’t have to shower because it’d upset your enjoyment of quenching yourself after a sauna, or because you showered at some previous point in time. You have to take a shower, because that’s what the lawmakers decided you had to do.

Also, sweat is one of the things that the chlorine is in the pool to deal with. If lots of sweaty people use the pool as their bathtub, then the pool has to use more chlorine, which is costly. And when they’re using more chlorine and there aren’t lots of sweaty people, then everyone gets to enjoy that burning eyes sensation from excess chlorine.

The chlorine needs to be adjusted for the number of people using the pool for exercise or recreation; not for the number of people using the pool as a bathtub.
[/QUOTE]

Where does it say you have to shower after a sauna? (I’m assuming, of course, that people shower before the sauna/pool routine. Also assuming that the sauna (or steamroom) is properly maintained for bacterial counts which fall within local regulations.) I can’t think why a person would be demonstrably more bacteria ridden post-shower, post-sauna than simply post-shower.

If the problem is that people aren’t showering before they sauna, then that should definitely be brought up to management, and they should station an employee by the exit to the pool facilities to remind people to shower before they swim or sauna.

People sweat in the pool, too. Sweat isn’t dirty, nor is it generally full of harmful bacteria. Most of the talk of steamrooms and saunas “sweating out” impurities and toxins is bullshit. (Not that it doesn’t feel good, but it’s not literally sweating nasty stuff out onto your skin.)

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[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Where does it say you have to shower after a sauna? (I’m assuming, of course, that people shower before the sauna/pool routine. Also assuming that the sauna (or steamroom) is properly maintained for bacterial counts which fall within local regulations.)
[/QUOTE]

“All persons must be required to take a cleansing shower using warm water and soap and thoroughly rinsing off all soap suds before entering the swimming area enclosure.”
The sauna enclosure is, quite obviously, not the same as the pool enclosure. Otherwise the pool would be the sauna.

I don’t know about health regs for saunas, other than likewise assuming that there are some.

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
…I can’t think why a person would be demonstrably more bacteria ridden post-shower, post-sauna than simply post-shower.

If the problem is that people aren’t showering before they sauna, then that should definitely be brought up to management, and they should station an employee by the exit to the pool facilities to remind people to shower before they swim or sauna.

People sweat in the pool, too. Sweat isn’t dirty, nor is it generally full of harmful bacteria. Most of the talk of steamrooms and saunas “sweating out” impurities and toxins is bullshit. (Not that it doesn’t feel good, but it’s not literally sweating nasty stuff out onto your skin.)
[/QUOTE]

It’s not just the bacteria; the other skin oils, etc. in sweat also mess up the pool chemistry, and make the water cloudy.

It’s possible to sweat in the pool, of course, but no where near the level of sweat that you incur from a sauna. Water is pretty efficient at cooling swimmers’ bodies, even if the pool is kept a bit too warm, and if you’re adequately cooled, no sweat. (IIRC there was a GQ thread on that a while back) And, as I’d mentioned above, the treatment chemicals should be determined by the swimmers’ use of the pool – not the bathers.

To sum up, you should shower before entering the pool after your sauna because (1) it’s usually the law, and (2) it’s damn rude to expect other people to swim around in your bathwater.

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In all the years I’ve been swimming, I’ve never seen anyone take a shower before getting in the water. This includes former Olympic swimmers and other high end people. If it doesn’t bother them then there must not be a problem. The only time I’ve seen cloudy pools is when the operators don’t know how to take care of the pool properly.

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[QUOTE=Edward The Head]
In all the years I’ve been swimming, I’ve never seen anyone take a shower before getting in the water. This includes former Olympic swimmers and other high end people. If it doesn’t bother them then there must not be a problem. The only time I’ve seen cloudy pools is when the operators don’t know how to take care of the pool properly.
[/QUOTE]

I’ll echo these sentiments. I competitively swam for a rather long time and never saw anyone shower before the pool.

15

In four years on the high school swim team I never saw anyone take a shower before swimming. We usually took showers after practice to wash off the chlorine. Besides, you should have seen the stuff some of the guys would *spit * in the pool. Yummy.

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Kids pee in there. That’s why the kiddie pool is so warm.
And why it tastes better.

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By the way…welcome, Smooth Jack. I knew I’d get you.

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We are now taking the habits of high school and college students as an example of good hygiene? :dubious:

I swam competitively for a long time – including with Olympians on my team (Tom Jager, who was kind of smelly IIRC). And once I started having to adjust pool chemistry, I started making sure I took a shower before swimming. Because: ick.

And once I had to deal with health inspectors bitching about people not showering while I was a lifeguard (years ago), we started making sure that people took showers.

Because it doesn’t matter whether other people don’t take showers before swimming, or whether you don’t think it’s a big deal, or whether no one wants the inconvenience of the whole thing – it’s the freakin’ law, here.

And, yeah, kids pee in there. And after the pool closes, lifeguards have been known to do other things in there that might increase the cloudiness of the water. But that’s still no excuse for everybody else to treat the pool like it was their bathtub.

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[QUOTE=Lightray]
“All persons must be required to take a cleansing shower using warm water and soap and thoroughly rinsing off all soap suds before entering the swimming area enclosure.”
The sauna enclosure is, quite obviously, not the same as the pool enclosure. Otherwise the pool would be the sauna.
[/QUOTE]

I read “swimming pool enclosure” as the large room containing the swimming pool, the floaty things, the paddle boards, the hot tub, whirlpool and sauna - all of which are accessed through one door from the locker room, otherwise it could just say “swimming pool”. I guess it’s up to the health inspector which of us is right.

20

Our local pool had this as a rule, claiming that a lot of hair products that most women use tend to make the pool murky and interfer with the chlorine. Is that also the case?