Officials knew about the contaminated brine since 2021, but the public only learned about it four years later. The Chief Sanitary Inspector responded to the topic, which was widely reported in the media, and based on the inspection studies, issued recommendations and standard regulations for all installations of this type in Poland.
GIS confirmed that these installations are not specified in the regulations. "Municipal graduation towers" are not spa treatment facilities within the meaning of the Act of July 28, 2005 on spa treatment, spa resorts and spa protection areas and on spa communes (consolidated text: Journal of Laws of 2025, item 1135).
Only in real spa graduation towers can there be no microbiological contamination of water used for inhalation.
Do the new regulations for municipal graduation towers, which are no longer graduation towers, allow such pollution?
The new regulations make it clear: municipal graduation towers are no longer graduation towers. These are "small water architecture structures using, among others, brine, which are not spa treatment devices." The regulations provide for various types of prohibitions related to bringing animals in, entering bowls containing brine or touching the brine. We encourage you to use it as intended or even not to destroy it, explains Łukasz Pawlik, director of the City Greenery Management Board.
Today, according to GIS, city graduation towers are objects that perform decorative and recreational functions. The new regulations in Krakow even include a recommendation regarding the inhalation time. The time spent in such a decorative object should not exceed 45 minutes. “A 30-minute session is recommended,” it said.
The new regulations also include a recommendation to consult a doctor before using such a facility. However, officials did not find a place to inform residents that fecal bacteria appear in the brine and aerosol. Why was there no information about the presence of contamination?
It is not the case that fecal bacteria are present there constantly - assures the director of the Municipal Greenery Board in Krakow. However, he adds that the risk exists, hence the recommendation to consult a doctor.
We have prepared these regulations in accordance with the guidelines presented by the Chief Sanitary Inspector. We even have a detailed template of what these regulations should look like, so we did not think about adding additional information here, because there is a lot of this information in the current version of the regulations - admits Łukasz Pawlik.
So we asked the Chief Sanitary Inspector why the model regulations did not include the information that the brine may be bacteriologically contaminated. By the time this material was published, we had not received a response.
In several hundred samples tested, bacteria were present all the time
For five years, we have been testing the brine and aerosol around these installations in all three graduation towers in Krakow. During this time, we tested several hundred brine samples and in each of them we detected Escherichia coli (enterococcus coli) and Enterococcus faecalis (fecal streptococcus) - explains Prof. Ph.D. engineer Katarzyna Wolny-Koładka from the Department of Microbiology and Biomonitoring, University of Agriculture in Krakow.
That is why I do not agree with the director of the Municipal Greenery Board, who claims that these bacteria do not occur there constantly - he adds. The only bacterium that does not always appear in the samples examined by scientists is Clostridium perfringens (gas gangrene).
The Chief Sanitary Inspector also detected similar contamination in other graduation towers.
Inhalation of aerosol from a decorative object is at your own risk
One of the issues that was copied from the template of the Chief Sanitary Inspector is the provision that staying in such a facility with brine is at one's own risk. Does this mean shifting responsibility to users?
Yes, this is probably why the regulations recommend that such inhalation within this installation be consulted with a doctor - admits Prof. Katarzyna Wolny-Koładka.
What can result from irresponsibility and using an installation that escapes the legal framework?
Our expert emphasizes that elderly people, children, people with respiratory diseases and asthmatics are particularly vulnerable.
