Why don't pools improve hygiene?

I don't recall sims being able to raise hygiene by swimming but looks like it was possible at one time.

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/858641/swimming-pools-can-make-great-bathtubs

Have you checked Answer Headquarters for a bug report?.

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/bd-p/The-Sims-4-Bugs

Too much chlorine?

Not sure about pools, my sims haven't used them in a while, but swimming in natural bodies of water such as rivers and the ocean does raise their hygiene, albeit very slowly. I don't understand it either.

I suspect the answer involves soap. There are good reasons to shower before and after you swim in a public pool

"FlamingoKicker1;d-996052" wrote:
Since they added that Water Conservation scenario in the game I sometimes end up with smelly sims who didn't get to the showers fast enough. Now I'm wondering why can't they just use their pools or if they live near large bodies of water go swimming and this should improve their hygiene. But nope. Somebody forgot (or choose not to include this) to change the coding so that they would eventually get cleaner. Water is water after all, right?

Because, if just bathing in water worked, our ancestors would never have come up with soap. Seriously, they only bathed using water in the 18th century. Lye soap was way too harsh for the skin. Now, they did add to the bath water what was called Rose Water, which was a mixture of water-soaked rose petals and alum, which did stave off the need for another bath for a few days (kind of on the order of the first deodorant). Besides, I grew up in houses (2) that had swimming pools and it is necessary to shower afterwards to remove the chlorine.

I can’t believe this is a serious question in 2021. Do you really think water alone can clean the dirt, dead skin cells, and bacteria we constantly accumulate on our bodies? I’ve always assumed the same applied to sims, therefore it makes sense swimming is not hygienic for them.

Well, water in itself is good enough to get rid of coarse dirt or unpleasant smells in real life (unless the water itself is dirty or smelly), and we're talking about a game where washing hands or brushing teeth a few times in a row can make an entire sim clean, so I don't see what's wrong with the question...

Pools used to improve hygiene. When did that change? When I was playing my whim challenge, my sim got the 1x1 pool she wanted and had to use it for hygiene for a while.

"GrumpyGlowfish;c-18023556" wrote:
Well, water in itself is good enough to get rid of coarse dirt or unpleasant smells in real life (unless the water itself is dirty or smelly), and we're talking about a game where washing hands or brushing teeth a few times in a row can make an entire sim clean, so I don't see what's wrong with the question...

Lol no it doesn’t. Our skin produces oils that keeps all the muck clinging to us and as we know water and oil don’t mix. That’s where soap and shampoo comes in. Here’s a good test: during a shower with water only, scrape your skin with your nails then see all the gunk under them because you thought you were clean without soap lmao.

No one is disagreeing with that, or saying that soap isn't necessary. But if you were really dirty and out of soap, wouldn't you rather shower with just water for once, than not at all? Because yes, even though water won't take care of the invisible dirt on your body, it's still good enough to wash away the stains and smell that a puddle of mud would leave on you, for example, and that's what I meant by "coarse dirt". (I apologise if "coarse" is the wrong term, I was using a translator.)

So I think it's realistic that sims bathing in pools or rivers raises their overall hygiene somewhat, albeit not as quickly or effectively as a proper shower, especially when washing hands and brushing teeth are presented as achieving the same goal despite being limited to only one small part of the body.