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Many people around the world feel that their environments have become too crowded. The traffic is too slow, the lines too long. But if you think that you've got it bad, try going to a public swimming pool in China! |
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The unbearable heat leads to droves of people looking to get a bit cooler, but because there aren't enough public pools to go around, they have to share with a huge crowd of others. And if this looks like fun, know that there are many risks you take in such a situation. Not only is the risk of drowning high, but this amount of people all swimming in the same body of water leads to very poor sanitary conditions, that in turn may lead to poisoning. |
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Research published by China's Ministry of health last year found that out of 5,639 public swimming pools tested, 10% were found to have a significant over-population of the H. Pylori bacteria (found in urine). The report goes on to say that in some cases the level of H. Pylori in the water was up to 92.3% and that the E coli level was over 96% in others. The repercussions of such a high level of contaminates can have fatal results. In 2008 one man died and 3,159 swimmers were poisoned swallowing water from a giant pool in which there were 50,000 people at the time, in Beijing. |
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In recent years, the Chinese municipalities has been allocating more and more budgets to increase the number of public pools in China, but until these are constructed, the Chinese have no choice but to share water space and hope they neither get poisoned nor drown. |
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