PWTAG issues press releases, technical notes and other guidance where appropriate. These are routinely published on www.pwtag.org, as well as distributed widely. PWTAG also produces articles for relevant magazines and writes in response to articles and letters published by others. Its work also has considerable exposure on radio and tv. PWTAG’s technical secretary addressed a meeting in 2005 of the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland about the work of PWTAG.

In the last two years PWTAG has published information about three issues in particular.

Interactive water features. These outdoor sprays etc have been the site of a number of infections. A technical release in March 2005 set out in some detail how they work, the role of risk assessment, and design and operational guidelines. (Decorative water features and paddling pools were dealt with in passing.)

Novel treatments. Over the years PWTAG has found itself evaluating new or apparently new, certainly unconventional pool water treatments – both chemicals and systems. This is often an unsatisfactory process, that founders on the reluctance of the marketplace to back up disputed claims with independent trials. So PWTAG posted on its website a substantial monograph on the subject. It covers oxidative products, metal ions, electrolytic processes, combinations and magnetism.

Copper/silver A press release in March 2006 dealt with the inability of copper/silver treatments to sanitise public pools withut a chlorine-based disinfectant residual. The active promotion, nevertheless, of a claimed stand-alone copper sulphate product required PWTAG to issue a further public statement on the subject in September 2006. This statement criticised the product’s promotion through exploiting asthma fears. Attempt by PWTAG to interest trading standards departmetnts in pursuing these issues have been unsuccessful unfortunately.