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California High School Polo Team Suffers Hair Loss and Skin Irritation from Pool
by Alexandra Kilpatrick
With a faulty carbon dioxide tank and a low chlorine level, Berkeley High School’s swimming pool irritated students’ eyes and skin, changed their hair color and caused them to lose their body hair.
The high school has now ordered a new carbon dioxide tank and increased the number of pH balance checks to make sure the problem is solved.
Water polo players at Berkeley High School’s pools were surprised to find that their eyes were burning and their skin irritated after practice. Some of the players also complained that their hair had been bleached white.
The high school pool closed down in October after parents complained to staff, but the school administration was initially stumped by the problem. After the city came in to test the pool the following day, they discovered that the pool’s faulty carbon dioxide tank had combined with low chlorine levels to increase the pool’s pH level to an exponentially high 8.5. Pool pH levels should be kept between 7.2 and 8.0.
The school’s water polo team coach William Gaebler reported these test results in an email to parents, explaining that the pH level was 10 times the allowable limit.
“The pH scale is an exponential scale, so 8.5 is very high, and the level of rapid eye and skin irritation due to chloramines rises significantly at levels above 0.6,” Gaebler wrote, according to Berkeleyside. “The high pH was caused by a defective CO2 tank, CO2 being the gas that buffers the pH.”
A new carbon dioxide tank, costing 7000 dollars, was installed in October and the school is currently testing the water three times per day, using a liquid buffer to restore pH levels to the correct level.
According to The Daily Californian, the school is contracting an independent tester to conduct monthly water evaluations rather than annual testing, as was previously done.
Berkeleyside reported that the high school pool had closed once before for similar problems with chemical imbalance. Parents of students on the high school water polo team expressed their dismay towards the school administration for negligence but didn’t want to make their complaints into a larger issue.
“We didn’t want the pool closed,” one anonymous parent told Berkeleyside. “We don’t want to make a political issue out of it. We want a safe and healthy environment for our children. We didn’t want the school administration to wait until there was a crisis to deal with this issue.”
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