There is currently much discussion as to whether exposure to the chemicals used in swimming pools early in a child's life is responsible for the initiation of symptoms of asthma in susceptible children. The main evidence for this comes from Belgium, and there have not been studies in Britain to our knowledge. There is some anxiety at DfES concerning the validity of these results, particularly since it is government policy that all primary school children learn to swim as part of the current curriculum.

ALSPAC did not ask about swimming directly in early parental questionnaires, but did ask about activities with the child undertaken with the mother and with the father at various time points. Reports of swimming would occur as text.

In order to assess the feasibility of undertaking a study of swimming in ALSPAC we therefore propose coding the activities undertaken with the child over time. This would allow us then to undertake power calculations to ascertain the appropriateness of carrying out a detailed analysis of the ALSPAC asthma data in this regard.

To this end we have managed to obtain a promise of £3500 - which I anticipate will cover the costs of JG coding all the activities over the pre-school and possibly the primary school period, and the computing team adding the data to the SPSS built files. The funders are the Amateur Swimming Association and the Pool Water Treatment Group, with some help possibly from DfES.'