Study of fungal contamination of indoor public swimming pools in Uromia, Iran

Abstract

The water in swimming pools cannot be a good carrier for transmission of fungal diseases but can be a source of fungus, so environmental surfaces may be contaminated by many species of fungi, and they then transmit them to swimmers. The fungal contaminations of four indoor swimming pools were studied by using membrane filtration and a swab sampling method. A total of 384 samples including water and environmental surfaces were collected and tested for the presence of fungi in different seasons within one year. Findings indicated that the average temperature, pH, residual chlorine and turbidity of water in the swimming pools within one year were respectively 29.9°C, 8.1, 0.6 ppm and 0.8 NTU. The most common fungi recovered were as follows: Aspergillus spp. 56.25%, Candida spp. 22.9%, Rhizopus spp. 4.16 %, other filamentous fungi 16.6% and other yeast species 2.8% isolated from water. The fungi such as Alternaria, Cladosporium, philophora and Trichophyton mentagrophytis were isolated from dressing rooms, bathing rooms and other environmental places out of the pools. According to these results and previous studies on pools, it has been indicated that contamination of the swimming pools by fungi in our study was not significant in water of pools and the environment. The presence of dermatophytic fungus from dressing rooms was probably due to human contact.