Disinfection Capability in Water for Swimming and Bathing Pools: A Simple Method for Their Evaluation in Practice

Prevention of infectious diseases transmission in swimming and bathing pools requires that sufficient disinfection capability is constantly maintained in the bathing water. Accordingly, German regulations make mandatory that any procedure for the treatment and disinfection of those waters must guarantee a certain minimum capability to inactivate human pathogens in the water. We describe here a simple method to evaluate the disinfection capability of pool water, expressed as the inactivation rate of selected microorganisms (Pseudomonas aeruginosa,Escherichia coli and Legionella pneumophila). The test might be carried out right onsite in the pool area using simple standard laboratory equipment normally present in microbiological laboratories and might be used for the evaluation of standard disinfectants and of others to be developed in the future. Results achieved with this test show good agreement with those obtained using a sophisticated stopped flow apparatus, developed exclusively for the evaluation of disinfection capability.