The symbol is also an Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph which represents the hieroglyph Â´nh (ankh) meaning life or breath of life. The glyph appears in an incredible number of inscriptions and was often used as a decorative device.
Some of the common summer viruses-- in particular the enteroviruses that can cause diarrhea and the well known hand-foot-mouth disease-- are easily acquired from other children who swim in the same pool. Drinking too much pool water can also cause diarrhea because of the chlorine. Although swallowing some pool water is inevitable, teaching a child proper technique in the water may save you from having to deal with this intestinal complaint.
The use of chlorine to disinfect water for the purpose of drinking produces low levels of various disinfection by-products with the trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids being the most common. The trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids have demonstrated carcinogenic activity in laboratory animals. Numerous assumptions are needed in estimating the health hazard of exposure to trihalomethanes in drinking water when using results of their chronic bioassays that employed corn oil gavage as the vehicle.