It’s summer and that means disturbing swim advisories. Here’s our top 5

It’s summer, and that means health organizations will be periodically showering Americans with reminders of how public swimming venues are actually nightmarish cesspits teeming with microbes that can burn your eyes, ravage your intestines, and eat your brains.

In attempts to communicate some pretty basic health advice—like, don’t pee or poop in a public pool and try to avoid gulping toxic algae from lakes—health organizations create a mesmerizing fountain of hilarious, graphic, disturbing, clumsy, and sometimes perplexing advisories.

Given this wellspring of vomitus summer fun, here are our picks for the top five public health advisories bobbing in the waters this summer.

5. The soiled euphemism

As you’ll see in the top picks, many health organizations dive head first into the poopy waters, fully embracing the fecal facts and not shying away from depicting biological flotsam. But the Virginia Department of Health is too demure for any of that, apparently. No, while other health organizations sink low, the VDH goes high, rising above the stomach-churning tides… or at least it tried.

Credit: VDH

In this valiant but ultimately failed attempt at defecation decorum, the VDH provides the most squeaky-clean image and polite message—only to end it with a blunt, well, “poop.” Not “stool” or “feces” mind you; just “poop.” It was a close one, but sadly, the pristine pool-side scene and quaint, grandma-approved euphemism are abruptly sullied by a last-minute turd bomb.

4. Germ bombs away

The next selection holds nothing back. It can occasionally be found swirling around state and local health departments but was initially flushed from the bowels of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, masters of infamous infographics.

While the ballistic factoids ostensibly relate to pool safety and the rationale for trying to avoid swallowing pool water, the infographic best functions as a general reminder that humans are inherently filthy animals that should probably only be swimming in vast vats of hand sanitizer.

The image “What’s in your cannonball?” catalogs the amounts of microbes in human hair, skin, poop, noses, mouths, and hands—without mentioning that many of them are actually harmless or even beneficial organisms. But that’s not all: With any pool launch, you’re firing off one to two soda cans worth of human sweat, a cup of pee, and, if you’re a child, 10 grams of poop.

Who’s ready for a swim?

3. The dipstick test

If swimming pools suddenly seem too confining and ill-equipped to handle the loaded loads we’re plunging, maybe a swim in a nice, big, natural lake sounds nice this summer? Think again.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services wants to ensure you don’t swim in any toxin-toting blooms of blue-green algae. In helpful, picture-based tips, the department advises against swimming in water that looks like green pea soup or green latex paint—in case any of those options seemed enticing. Dead fish and “floating scum, globs, or mats” are also (apparently not obvious) signs to stay away.

The stick test.

Credit: WDHS

But, in case you encounter a sludgy, green oasis that you simply can’t pass up (for some reason), the WDHS offers a few options, including The Stick Test. That’s right, if you’d like to talk yourself into slipping into a slimy soak, the health department is happy to help. The stick test is simple: just find yourself a long, sturdy stick for prodding the ooze. Stick it in, and, if it comes out “looking like it has been dipped into a can of paint,” you’re probably looking at blue-green algae, and it’s best to find another goo pit for your dip. But, if the stick comes out with thick, green mucus-like strands hanging off of it, then you’re in luck because you’ve probably got non-toxic filamentous green algae… probably. So, the water is … fine? Probably. Have fun!

2. The protective pee puzzler

If talk of snotty green goop has you rethinking the public pool option, then the Cleveland Clinic has a positive pee puzzler for you to ponder. In a post published Thursday—that was absolutely not written by an AI chatbot—the Cleveland Clinic poses the prime pee-related question plaguing all of our puny human brains: Does the pee in public pools have protective properties?

Specifically, the post, complete with the predictable pee pun, “urine for some bad news,” asks:

Chances are, if you go to a public pool, you run the risk of swimming in other people’s pee. But does that make the act of swimming any safer?

While it’s questionable whether this question would ever cross an actual human’s mind, the answer is, of course, “no.” There are no known safety benefits of peeing in pools. While peeing in pools isn’t particularly harmful, either, it could create mild irritants like trichloramines.

Much has been made of the fact that the uric acid from human pee can mix with chlorinated pool water to form cyanogen chloride, which is a chemical warfare agent. But, it isn’t formed anywhere near the concentrations at which it would cause harm.

As Ars calculated years ago:

In the end, we need a pool that is two parts water to one part chlorine and would probably burn the eyeballs out of your sockets and make your skin peel away from your bones (this calls for a pool boy who can only be criminally sadistic). If you and three million other people could get at this pool and unload your pee into it before your bodies melted, before the crowd crushed you to death, and before you drowned from the massive tidal wave of pee… yes, you could feasibly die of cyanogen chloride poisoning originating from chlorinated water and pee.

So far, there’s no evidence that exposure to the actual, very low concentrations of cyanogen chloride in pools will protect you in any way or give you superpowers.