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If you love visiting Las Vegas and luxuriating in one of their many fancy pools where waitstaff brings you booze and chicken wings all day, well…maybe don’t read this article.
Or, if you do, plan on finding yourself a new favorite vacay spot (maybe the ocean, where saltwater kills a lot of stuff!).
The tale of why Las Vegas pools are The Worst comes to us courtesy of biological and chemical warfare specialist Dan Kaszeta. He began his career as a Chemical Officer with the US Army, spent some time working for the Pentagon as a defense contractor, and he’s trained on historical and modern chemical and biological weapons of war.
He began the tweet thread trying to be nice to y’all, just saying that you should never swim in a Vegas pool – or even touch the water.
Originally, he declined to induce vomit with the details.
I know certain things so that you don’t have to.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 24, 2020
Then some Vegas pool enthusiasts (I guess that’s a thing) kept prodding, and so now we all have to know exactly what we’re swimming in, so hold on.
It began in the late 1990s, when he was working “at the White House Military Office.” A friend from another federal agency called, asking if they could use his lab to do a full chemical and biological analysis on a suspicious sample.
They sent the unknown substance to the lab, along with a couple of samples from the hotel – one of tap water, and one from the pool.
In this case, I seem to recall the suspect item was a clear liquid. The guy in the field collected some control and background samples. Including tap water and some swimming pool water. From a major hotel.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
We don’t want to see where this is going, but I’m afraid we do.
You can see where this is going.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
Once the lab was done with their magic, they were alarmed enough to call Dan in the middle of the night with the results.
Two days later, I get a phone call in the middle of the night at home. From the White House switchboard. The lab is VERY eager to talk to me
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
They didn’t know which of the substances was the one that was supposed to be of concern, but that one turned out to be completely harmless. The tap water was fine.
Now, the lab, wisely and in accordance with good processes, did not know which sample was which. It turns out the “suspicious” liquid that had kicked off the investigation was something relatively harmless like glycerine.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
The control sample, from the pool water, was not fine.
The sample that had one of the finest labs in the country alarmed so much was, erm, the control sample from the pool water.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
A SHOP OF HORRORS.
It was, to use a technical phrase “a shop of horrors”
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
It contained…a lot of nasty stuff. And this is just the first tweet.
Alarming levels of Giardia and Cryptosporidium, both highly resistant to chlorine. A huge number of metabolites from human urine. Fecal matter, human, mammal, and avian. Trace amounts of cocaine, ketamine, and several different opiates.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
Viruses. The stuff you get from a tick bite.
Adenoviruses. A weak immunochromatographic hit for Tularemia (not conclusive). Campylobacter.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
Other stuff he’d never heard of, which I’m assuming was really saying something.
A soup of other things that I didn’t even know existed. There I was at 3 am reading my manuals.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
Being into the scientific method, he asked for more samples from other pools at the local hotels, just to make sure this wasn’t a bad day or something.
Now, a study like this isn’t revelatory if it isn’t reproducible. For giggles, I called my guy and told him to collect some more pool samples from other pools. You can guess how that worked out.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
It wasn’t. Water straight out of the Potomac was safer than what filled the pools in Vegas.
I went and got Potomac river water and sent it in. It was safer.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
A few years later he was in town and collected his own samples. Same thing.
Long story made short – chlorination kills some things, but not others. “Las Vegas pools are clean and safe” is not the hill I’d choose to die on.
Have a nice day.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
And sure, there were people who gave him a hard time, but he said he “knows what he knows” and he’s not getting in any pools out there.
Honestly, I don’t care if I make Las Vegas upset with this thread. I know what I know. Do what you want. Personally, I’d avoid a Vegas pool.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
Maybe no public pools at all, if I had to guess.
He did link to real, published studies that verified his facts.
There’s academic literature on this sort of thing. For example Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Jan; 16(2): 166.
Published online 2019 Jan 9. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16020166— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
Now that you know what he knows, are you getting in the Vegas pools?
If you do…don’t get any water in your mouth. Seriously.
I’m listening to the expert and not getting in at all, but as ever in this country, you do you.
