Minneapolis high school swimmer invents device that detects harmful pool chemicals
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Aditi Gandhi spends a lot of time in the pool. The 17-year old started swimming when she was four, and she now swims competitively for her high school, the Blake School in Minneapolis.
When she’s out of the regular swim season, she also swims for a club team, so she spends at least a couple of hours in the pool almost every day.
And she loves it.
“It’s very calming mentally. It makes me physically feel good, and it's just a great way to keep in shape,” Gandhi said. “I've met some very close friends on the team as well, which has kept me going.”
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However, swimming doesn’t always make her feel good.
“Me and my teammates, we would notice after long practices that we would start feeling very sick,” Gandhi told MPR News. “I would notice increased inflammation and pain after swimming, when swimming is actually supposed to take away your pain, because it circulates blood.”
Gandhi has a venous condition. While swimming should provide relief by increasing blood flow, she found, at times, being in the pool was actually making her condition worse.
She said she and her teammates often get other symptoms, too, like coughing or wheezing, eye redness and irritation, and runny noses after spending long periods of time in the pool.
She did some online research and found that chloramines were likely making her and other swimmers sick.
Chloramines cause that distinct and sometimes noxious pool smell that many of us think is chlorine — but it’s not, and it’s not a good sign.
Chloramines are gases that release when chlorine in pool water reacts with substances like urine, sweat and oils from swimmers’ bodies.
Experts say that most swimmers don’t shower before getting into the pool, and many of them urinate in the pool, too. Those substances, along with excess chlorine and poor ventilation around the pool, can cause the harmful gases to build up.
Breathing in chloramines can cause allergy-like symptoms, respiratory problems and even asthma.
Experts say that while those who don’t swim often face little risk, chloramine exposure is a real issue for frequent swimmers like Gandhi and her teammates.
Dr. Avery Michienzi, a toxicologist at the University of Virginia and a former University of Minnesota swimmer, says long term exposure to chloramine gas can be very harmful, especially for athletes who rely heavily on their lungs to get them to the finish line.
“(Chloramines) can lead to a breakdown of your respiratory tract and also lead people to have not only asthma issues, but also just increased susceptibility to viral infections,” said Michienzi.
Dr. Michienzi is a friend of Aditi Gandhi’s high school coach, who put the two in touch with one another to talk about ways to limit her and other swimmers’ exposure to chloramines.
Gandhi’s invention
But to prove they were the cause of her symptoms, Gandhi first needed a way to test for chloramines, which are tricky to measure in the air.
It requires specialized equipment that is hard to find outside of a lab, according to Dr. Ernest “Chip” Blatchley III, an environmental engineering professor at Purdue University.
“There's really no convenient, simple, inexpensive method that allows us to measure these things in real time,” Blatchley said.
That was until Aditi Gandhi sprung into action.
The high school junior invented a device, which is a small, plastic box that sits next to the pool and has sensors that continuously monitor chloramine levels in the air.
A display on the box tells you if levels are higher than normal.
Because it is difficult to measure chloramines in the air directly, her patent-pending prototype device instead measures them by proxy, detecting four variables in the air that are associated with chloramines.
“One sensor measures total volatile organic compounds, which are gas compounds, and equivalent CO2, which is like carbon dioxide, as well as temperature and relative humidity,” Gandhi said.
“If the four variables increase, then it's more likely to have chloramines in the environment,” said Gandhi.
If chloramine levels are too high, swimming pool personnel will know right away and can then take steps to lower them.
“The development of a tool that would allow us to measure the chloramines or, in her case, to measure a proxy for the chloramines — I mean, that's filling a need,” said Blatchley, who also advised Gandhi in her development of the device.
As a former competitive swimmer herself, Dr. Michienzi said she was especially excited to learn about Gandhi’s invention.
“I thought it was a very amazing, very impressive endeavor for a high school student to do, and I think something that could potentially have a big health impact as well," said Michienzi. “I was very excited about it.”
After winning a few science fair awards for her invention, Gandhi will next bring her chloramine detector to the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) competition in Phoenix, Ariz., the week of May 9.
She will also be the spotlight of a Council for the Model Aquatic Health Code (CMAHC) webinar, a nonprofit that partners with the CDC to prevent injury and illness in public pools.
