The estate of a person who recently died from complications with MRSA has asked me to sanitize the pool and pool deck while the house is in probate. Any special recommendations for this scenario?
Thanks,
Scott
You need to be a member of Pool Genius Network™ to add comments!
If you are a member of the "pool industry" community, you have found your home.
This is a network of pool builders, service professionals, retailers, and pool sales reps,…
Swimming pools are often associated with luxury, relaxation, and endless summer fun. But there's more than just the allure of crystal-clear water that leads a…
The Journal of the Swimming Pool and Spa Industry is coming back! JSPSI, a peer-reviewed technical journal, began in 1995 as a subscription-supported print-based publication. It contained articles at a technical…
All pool plaster finishes should last 20 years or more. However, some last only 5 to 7 years, and some less than a year before the plaster surface deteriorates, discolors, and looks terrible.
Why the difference? Very often, plaster…
For 50 years, the pool industry has considered pool water within an LSI of -0.3 and +0.5 to be acceptable and balanced. But recently, and without providing any supporting science or research, the NPC is trying to convince the industry that any…
There are two important issues involved when trying to achieve quality colored pool plaster that will remain durable, attractive, and the proper shade for many years.
The first issue is to utilize superior workmanship practices to achieve…
Replies
Yes, as shown in this paper, chlorine kills 99.999% (5-log reduction) of Staphylococcus aureus in 5 minutes with 1.64 ppm FC and 50 ppm CYA or <= 0.64 ppm FC with no CYA. A properly disinfected pool will not harbor planktonic MRSA. If the chlorine level got to zero, however, then significant biofilms could form and those are harder to remove. Basically, it is unlikely that the pool itself has MRSA and any pool deck surfaces could be scrubbed with any of the products linked to in my earlier post. If there is a concern about biofilms on pool surfaces, then you can use AquaFinesse™ to help remove them (one puck per 20,000 gallons).
Richard,
Thanks for that info. Makes sense. We can kill the MRSA outside the human body with chlorine, but we cannot put enough chlorine inside the human body to kill MRSA inside the patient. So, the fact that a person who died of MRSA complications swam a lot in their backyard pool does not make the pool a health hazard, as long as proper levels of disinfectant are maintained.
Thanks again
See Environmental Cleaning & Disinfecting for MRSA from the CDC and EPA's Registered Antimicrobial Products Effective Against Methicill.... Basically, MRSA is no more difficult to kill than standard run-of-the-mill Staphylococcus aureus (or "staph") through use of standard cleaning products (including chlorine). The "methicillin-resistant" aspect refers to specific resistance against certain antibiotics. Standard cleaning products are broad-spectrum killers but as such they cannot be used in the body whereas antibiotics can. This is why it is so much easier to kill bacteria on surfaces than in the body. Bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics because they kill through very specific chemical mechanisms that can potentially be bypassed through mutations (i.e. evolution). Broad-spectrum disinfectants kill through multiple mechanisms that cannot be so readily bypassed, at least not through a small number of mutations.