Kids sick due to poor air quality at Regina swim meet

The City of Regina says there was a problem with the ventilation system at a public pool where several children complained of coughing after a swim competition.

About 600 young swimmers from Manitoba and Saskatchewan took part in the regional and provincial swim meet at the Lawson Aquatic Centre that ran from March 14 to March 17.

Shorty after some parents said their children were coughing, and believed it had to do with the air quality at the pool.

The city said the problem was that the ventilation system for the pool froze.

"The air intakes and exhaust had frozen," said Chris Holden with the City of Regina. "They had shut down. Then we have warning systems that alert our operational staff about the fact that the system isn't running. That, failed."

Holden said the system was fixed Monday and that staff is working on installing another fail-safe to make sure the same problem doesn't happen again.