One mother is warning other parents to be extra careful this summer after her children got sick with chlorine poisoning after visiting a hotel pool. Mother of three Kathy Hartman says that she would have never imagined seeing her kids as sick as they got after her family ended up in the hospital.
Speaking to Nashville’s News Channel 5, Hartman says that she noticed that something was wrong after her three children along with a few cousins acted rather strangely after spending the day at the Residence Inn at Opryland hotel pool. She said that while on their way back to Chicago, everyone in the car was coughing or experiencing some sort of respiratory problems. That’s when Hartman decided to call her child’s pediatrician, who told her right away that the symptoms sounded like chlorine poisoning. This prompted Hartman to take everyone to the emergency room.
Hartman wasted no time in taking the kids to Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital in Vanderbilt. Hartman told doctors at the hospital that she noticed there was a lot of chlorine in the air and that one of the employees at the Resident Inn admitted that the pool room’s dehumidifier wasn’t working.
Hartman said, “He said, 'Look, the dehumidifier in the pool broke and our hotel was booked solid so we made the call to say it was safe to swim, but that was the wrong call.”
A manager for the Residence Inn Hotel denied the allegations in an interview this past week. He said that the chlorine levels in the hotel’s pool were in the permissible range. Nashville Fire Department Public Information Officer Joseph Pleasant added that “the levels for chlorine were in the permissible range for being airborne, however, there should not have been any readings at all so the pool is closed."A representative for Residence Inn Hotel has not made any additional comments about the issue.
Chlorine poisoning can occur when a person touches, swallows or inhales too much chlorine. This is when it reacts with water outside of the body and on mucosal surfaces in the body, including the water in the digestive tract, causing hydrochloric acid and hypochlorous acid to form. Both of these substances can be extremely poisonous and must be treated immediately. Some of the symptoms to keep an eye out for include coughing, difficulty breathing and fluid inside the lungs.