Do Raccoons Swim in Pools? And What to Do About It

Raccoons are competent swimmers and will happily wade, paddle, and defecate in residential swimming pools. They treat backyard pools the way they treat any shallow body of water: as a place to cool off, drink, wash food, and relieve themselves. The bigger concern is not the swimming itself but what raccoons deposit in the water, because raccoon feces can carry parasites that standard pool chlorine does not kill.

Why Raccoons Are Attracted to Your Pool

Raccoons are semi-aquatic by nature. In the wild, they spend a lot of time along streams, ponds, and marshes, foraging for crayfish, frogs, and other prey. A backyard pool is an obvious draw: it’s a reliable, clean water source with easy entry points like steps, ledges, and shallow ends. Raccoons will drink from it, dip food into it (they habitually rinse or manipulate food items in water), and sometimes simply lounge on the top step on a hot night.

Pool decks also attract raccoons for a secondary reason. Insects are drawn to pool lights, and raccoons eat insects. Fallen fruit from nearby trees, pet food bowls left outside, and open garbage cans all increase the odds that a raccoon will discover your pool during its nightly rounds. Once a raccoon finds a good water source, it tends to return repeatedly, often establishing a routine.

The telltale sign that raccoons have been in your pool is feces. Raccoons prefer to defecate in or near water. They also tend to establish communal latrines, returning to the same spot. If you find scat on a pool step, on the pool’s shallow-end floor, or floating on the surface, raccoons are almost certainly the culprits. The droppings are typically dark, tubular, and may contain visible seeds or berry fragments.

What Makes Raccoon Feces in Pool Water Dangerous

The primary health risk from raccoon-contaminated pool water is a parasite called Baylisascaris procyonis, commonly known as the raccoon roundworm. Raccoons carry this parasite at high rates. A study of urban raccoons in Winnipeg found that half of the animals examined at postmortem were positive for the parasite, and about a third of fecal samples collected from communal latrines tested positive as well.¹ Prevalence varies by region, but in many parts of North America, a substantial portion of the raccoon population is infected.

The danger comes from the eggs the parasite sheds in raccoon feces. When a person accidentally ingests these eggs, the larvae can migrate through the body and into the central nervous system, causing a condition called neural larva migrans. This is rare in humans, but when it happens the consequences are severe. A scoping review of documented human cases found that about four in five patients developed neurological disease. Among those with neurological involvement whose outcomes were reported, roughly one in five died, only one in ten fully recovered, and the remaining majority were left with lasting neurological deficits.² Ocular disease, including permanent vision loss, was another common outcome.²

Young children are at the highest risk, because they are more likely to put contaminated objects or water in their mouths and because their smaller body size means fewer larvae can cause proportionally more damage. A case report from Vancouver describes a 17-month-old boy who presented with progressive drowsiness, loss of coordination, and abnormal neck posture. Imaging revealed brain inflammation, and serological testing confirmed Baylisascaris procyonis infection.³ Cases like this underscore why raccoon feces in a pool deserve more than a quick skim-and-forget response.

Why Chlorine Does Not Solve the Problem

This is the part that catches most pool owners off guard. You might assume that a properly chlorinated pool would neutralize raccoon parasites the way it handles bacteria and many viruses. It doesn’t. Baylisascaris eggs have a tough, multi-layered shell that resists chemical disinfection. Research testing the viability of these eggs found that even prolonged exposure to undiluted household bleach, far more concentrated than anything in your pool, failed to kill them. Eggs soaked in straight bleach for 90 minutes remained viable. The researchers specifically noted that hyperchlorination of contaminated swimming pool water is unlikely to be effective.⁴

Standard pool chlorine levels sit far below undiluted bleach concentration, so if pure bleach can’t kill the eggs in an hour and a half, your pool’s normal chemical balance has essentially no effect on them. This means that the correct response to raccoon feces in a pool is physical removal, not chemical treatment. The CDC’s guidance for raccoon fecal contamination in recreational water calls for removing the feces, then filtering and backwashing the pool. In some cases, the agency recommends draining the pool entirely if the contamination was significant or if the feces had been in the water long enough for eggs to potentially become infective (which takes two to four weeks in the environment, though warmer temperatures can accelerate development).

How to Clean a Pool After Raccoon Contamination

If you find raccoon droppings in your pool, act quickly but methodically. Here is the general approach recommended by public health authorities:

• Close the pool: Keep everyone out of the water, especially children and pets, until cleanup is complete.
• Remove the feces: Use a net or bucket to scoop out the droppings. Do not use your pool’s vacuum system for this, because you don’t want fecal material passing through the filtration system’s plumbing if you can avoid it.
• Filter aggressively: Run the filtration system continuously for at least 24 hours after removal. Then backwash the filter thoroughly. If you use a sand or DE filter, backwash it multiple times. If you have a cartridge filter, consider replacing the cartridge.
• Consider draining: For heavy contamination, or if feces went unnoticed for days or weeks, draining the pool, scrubbing the surfaces, and refilling is the safest option. Heat kills Baylisascaris eggs more reliably than chemicals, so if you have the option to clean surfaces with boiling water or a steam cleaner, that adds a layer of protection.
• Dispose carefully: Bag the removed feces and any cleaning materials in sealed plastic bags and throw them in the trash. Wash your hands thoroughly afterward.

The inconvenience of these steps is real, but the risk profile of Baylisascaris makes shortcuts unwise. The eggs are sticky, durable, and can persist in the environment for years under the right conditions. Treating this as a “just scoop and shock” situation misses the point that the organism you’re dealing with is specifically adapted to survive chemical assault.

Other Pathogens Raccoons Can Introduce

Baylisascaris is the headline concern, but raccoons carry other organisms that could contaminate pool water. Leptospira bacteria, shed in raccoon urine, are a known risk. A study of raccoons in California found that about a quarter tested positive for Leptospira in kidney tissue or urine.⁵ A separate longitudinal study in Ontario also confirmed that raccoons can shed leptospires in urine, though at lower rates in that population.⁶ Leptospirosis in humans causes flu-like symptoms and can progress to kidney or liver damage in serious cases. Unlike Baylisascaris eggs, Leptospira bacteria are more vulnerable to chlorine and desiccation, so a well-maintained pool’s chemistry offers some protection here. Still, a raccoon urinating on the pool steps or in the shallow end introduces a bolus of bacteria that may exceed what the chlorine can neutralize immediately.

Raccoons also harbor Cryptosporidium, a chlorine-resistant protozoan that causes gastrointestinal illness. A survey of wildlife in the Chesapeake Bay region found multiple Cryptosporidium genotypes in raccoons and related mesocarnivores.⁷ Cryptosporidium is already a well-known pool pathogen from human sources, and it too resists normal chlorine levels, requiring extended contact time at elevated concentrations or UV treatment to inactivate.

Giardia, rabies virus (through saliva if an animal bites or scratches near the water, not through the water itself), and canine distemper virus are additional concerns, though the pool water transmission route for most of these is less direct. The takeaway is that raccoons are not just nuisance visitors; they’re walking pathogen reservoirs, and their habit of defecating and urinating in water makes pools an unusually efficient delivery system.

How to Keep Raccoons Out of Your Pool

Prevention is far easier than cleanup. Raccoons are intelligent, dexterous, and persistent, so no single measure is foolproof, but layering several deterrents together is effective for most homeowners.

• Pool covers: A solid, taut pool cover is the single best physical barrier. Floating solar covers won’t stop a raccoon; they’ll just walk across them. You need a safety cover that can support weight and has no gaps at the edges. Automatic covers that retract into a housing work well because they create a tight seal.
• Remove attractants: Bring in pet food bowls at night. Secure garbage cans with bungee cords or locking lids. Pick up fallen fruit from trees near the pool. Turn off pool lights or switch to motion-activated lighting, which startles raccoons rather than drawing in insects for them to eat.
• Fencing: A fence around the pool area can help, but standard four-foot pool fencing won’t stop a raccoon, since they are agile climbers. Adding a roller bar to the top of the fence, or using electric fence wire along the top, increases effectiveness. An electric fence line about eight inches from the ground is one of the more reliable raccoon deterrents used by wildlife management professionals.
• Motion-activated deterrents: Sprinkler systems triggered by infrared sensors can startle raccoons enough to send them elsewhere. These work best when newly installed, as raccoons may habituate over time. Moving the sensor’s position periodically helps maintain the surprise factor.
• Remove access points: Trim tree branches that overhang the pool area. Raccoons often travel along tree limbs and fences, so eliminating overhead routes reduces the likelihood they’ll drop into the pool zone.

Chemical repellents marketed for raccoons (ammonia-soaked rags, predator urine, cayenne pepper) are generally unreliable. Raccoons in urban and suburban settings are accustomed to strong smells and unfamiliar stimuli. These products may provide a day or two of deterrence at best. Physical barriers and the removal of food sources are far more consistent.

Raccoon Latrines Near the Pool Deck

Even if raccoons don’t enter the water, they may establish a latrine on or near your pool deck, on a flat rooftop overlooking the pool, or at the base of a tree in the pool area. A latrine is a communal defecation site that multiple raccoons use repeatedly, and a single latrine can accumulate a large load of Baylisascaris eggs over a season. Rain can wash material from a nearby latrine into the pool, creating the same contamination problem as a raccoon defecating directly in the water.

Identifying and cleaning up latrines is an important part of managing raccoon activity around your pool. Latrines are usually found on flat, elevated surfaces: rooftops, large tree crotches, decks, fallen logs, and rock ledges are common sites. If you find one, the cleanup protocol is more involved than just scooping up the droppings. Because Baylisascaris eggs are so environmentally persistent, contaminated soil or decking material can remain infectious for years. Flame treatment (a propane torch carefully applied to hard surfaces) is one of the few methods that reliably destroys the eggs on surfaces. For soil, removal and replacement of the top several inches is sometimes recommended.

Wear disposable gloves and an N95 mask during cleanup. Baylisascaris eggs are microscopic and can become airborne in dust, so avoiding inhalation is a real consideration, not just a nicety. Bag everything in sealed plastic, and wash any clothing you wore during the process in hot water.

Protecting Pets

Dogs are susceptible to Baylisascaris infection and tend to be more exposed than humans because they investigate raccoon feces with their noses and mouths. A dog drinking from a raccoon-contaminated pool or sniffing at a latrine site can ingest eggs. Clinical disease in dogs resembles the human version: the larvae migrate to the brain and eyes, causing neurological signs and vision loss. Dogs are also at risk for leptospirosis from raccoon urine; in fact, canine leptospirosis has been increasingly linked to wildlife reservoirs in suburban areas.⁵

If your dog swims in the pool and raccoons have been visiting, the same cleanup protocol applies before you let the dog back in. Talk to your veterinarian about the leptospirosis vaccine, which covers several common serovars and is considered a core vaccine in areas where wildlife exposure is likely. There is no vaccine for Baylisascaris, so prevention by keeping raccoons away from your yard and pool is the only reliable strategy for that parasite.

When to Call a Professional

If raccoons are visiting your pool regularly despite your best efforts, or if you’ve found a latrine with a heavy accumulation of old feces, professional wildlife control is worth the cost. Licensed nuisance wildlife operators can trap and relocate raccoons (where local law permits), identify entry points and travel routes you may have missed, and clean up latrines with the proper equipment. Some jurisdictions require professional handling of raccoon waste specifically because of the Baylisascaris risk.

Your local health department can also be a resource. In areas where Baylisascaris is endemic, some departments will test raccoon feces from your property to confirm the parasite’s presence, which helps you calibrate the urgency of your response. If anyone in your household, especially a young child, may have ingested contaminated water or had contact with raccoon feces, seek medical attention promptly. Early treatment with antiparasitic medication can reduce the severity of Baylisascaris infection if started before larvae reach the central nervous system, but the window is narrow. Waiting for symptoms to appear before seeking care often means the damage is already underway.⁸