Too Much Chlorine in Indoor Pool 'Burned' Children's Skin, Mom Says - East Idaho News
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Too Much Chlorine in Indoor Pool ‘Burned’ Children’s Skin, Mom Says

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Thinkstock 011315 PoolChemicalTesting?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1421196299328Ernest Prim/iStock/Thinkstock(MONROEVILLE, Pa.) — Consuela Matthews was right on track to give her daughter the coolest 11th birthday party she could muster. The kids were splashing in an indoor pool and would spend the night at a hotel like little grown-ups under her supervision.

But as the weekend’s birthday adventure at the Hampton Inn in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, drew to a close, her daughter, TaJah Matthews, and her four friends developed strange rashes that worried Consuela Matthews enough to alert the other mothers and apologize. Then, one of the mothers called to say her daughter’s doctor said it was a chemical burn.

“Everything seemed perfectly normal,” Matthews said, adding that she never dreamed the girls would get chemical burns.

All five of the children at the party eventually took separate trips to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center on Monday, and some — but not all — were diagnosed with first-degree burns, Matthews said, though doctors could not confirm for any of them whether chlorine caused their injuries. They were all given creams to treat their injured skin as if it had been burned, she said.

The hospital was unable to confirm details of Matthews’ account because they didn’t have release forms from the parents.

The Hampton Inn is investigating what happened, regional director of operations Michael Gulotty told ABC News. He said another group with children also complained over the weekend.

Gulotty said a certified pool operator tests chlorine levels at the hotel three times a day and records the results for inspection by the county health department in accordance with the law. An independent company also comes by to do additional tests at least once a week.

“The tests reflected a level of 2, with a level of 1 to 5 being acceptable,” he told ABC News. “Higher than 5 is when too much chlorine is being introduced. Lower than 1 and not enough is being introduced.”

But when someone from the health department came to check the chlorine on Monday in a test unrelated to this case, it showed a chlorine level of 10, Gulotty said.

“Our technician repeated our certified test in front of inspector and the result was a 2,” he said. “Please note, we already have the third-party test occurring each week, and they show us in the 2 to 5 range for the last several tests. Regardless, we are using a new testing method and verifying its accuracy. We closed the pool until our investigation is completed.”

Pool chemical injuries resulted in nearly 5,000 emergency room visits in 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About half of them were deemed preventable and happened to children and teenagers. Poisoning was the most common injury.

A 2008 study out of the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health chronicled a similar situation in which more than two dozen people were exposed to chlorine and ammonia byproducts at a hotel pool. About 84 percent of them developed a cough, 78 percent had eye irritation and 34 percent developed a rash.

Matthews and the kids in her care arrived at the hotel on Friday, went to the pool three times, spending two hours in the water each time, before leaving the hotel on Sunday, she said.

One girl said that her underarms were irritated, but she went back in the pool anyway, Matthews said. So Matthews didn’t think anything of it.

“I did notice the water was burning my eyes a whole lot,” Matthews said, adding that she always opens her eyes underwater when she swims. “I said, ‘Oh my goodness, this really burns.'”

Matthews didn’t think anything of it until Sunday when the girls were “really, really hurting,” she said. Although Matthews didn’t develop a rash, she said the skin under the girls’ arms turned red and the area under their eyes turned red, too.

“It’s peeling,” she said. “It looks like a rug burn. I don’t understand.”

Dr. Kord Honda, director of dermatopathology at UH Case Medical Center in Cleveland, said he had never heard of chemical burns from swimming in too much chlorine, but said he would expect it to be red, painful and eventually start to peel. He said he would expect a burn-like reaction from washing hands in undiluted bleach or being involved in some kind of industrial accident.

“This would be a very uncommon occurrence,” Honda said. “You would have to get to a fairly high concentration for it to be toxic.”


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