By IANS
Brussels : A new study by Belgian scientists warned that swimming lessons may lead to problems with children's lung development.
Children are generally not ready for formal swimming lessons until they are at least four years old. Those who learn how to swim also face the risk of drowning, reported the online edition of health magazine WebMD.
A team of researchers led by Alfred Bernard of the Catholic University of Louvain here studied 341 Belgian schoolchildren who were about 11 years of age. The children provided blood samples and had their lung health tested.
The researchers noted that 43 children had taken infant swimming lessons in indoor pools and the lungs of these children appeared to be predisposed to developing asthma and recurrent bronchitis.
The study, which appeared in the journal Paediatrics, does not prove that infant swimming caused those lung problems but the researchers suggest that chlorine-related gases in indoor pools may have been a factor.
Although Bernard's team doesn't know how much chlorine was in the pools in which the children had their infant swimming lessons, the researchers speculate that chlorine-related gases may cause lung irritation that is particularly damaging to infants' lungs, which are still developing.