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Crypto: Pool Parasite Can Infect Swimmers

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) ― With triple-digit temperatures this past week, the swimming pool is more and more inviting for kids and families. But when a Folsom girl got sick and wasn't getting better, her mother found out it wasn't a flu bug that was going around; it may have been the swimming pool that made her sick.

For days, Natalie and her sister had suffered from horrible flu symptoms that would go away and then mysteriously reappear days later.

"It did just seem like the regular flu," said Janelle McGuckin, Natalie's mother. "The difference in the symptoms were neither of them had fevers and they would act normal."

It didn't seem contagious. That's when Janelle, a nurse, asked the doctor to do more tests.

"He called and said a few days later that the cryptosporidium came back positive," she said.

Cryptosporidium, more commonly known as "crypto," had probably infected Natalie with the parasite while she was swimming, according to her pediatrician. While crypto is very rare, it is resistant to the chlorine that swimming pools use to get rid of bacteria and parasites.

It's so serious that only a few cases at the same place will be considered an outbreak, and the number of outbreaks have increased this year.

Since July, the Dallas/Fort Worth area has had 144 confirmed cases of crypto. The parasite may even have caused one girl's death.

The Sacramento area averages two to three cases a year.

Colleen Maitoze is with Sacramento County's environmental management department, who has the job of inspecting and testing the county's 2,200 pools. Using portable testing equipment, county inspectors check every recreational water source from pools to spas, checking for proper amounts and effectiveness of chlorine in the water.

But even that isn't enough to keep the water safe.

"You should be showering before you get into the water," Colleen said. "If you've got sores on your skin or diarrhea in the past couple weeks, you shouldn't be using the pool."

It's also important that kids don't drink water from the pool, which is harder to control with new water play areas. Regular swim diapers won't cut it. You need to have swim trunks for kids with elastic that will hold in any accidents.

The only way to kill off crypto in a pool is to hyper-chlorinate, a method that puts a large amount of chlorine in the pool to kill off the parasite. Janelle had her pool hyper-chlorinated.

This year, there have been 10 confirmed crypto cases in the Sacramento area.

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