In Germany, 15 people were poisoned by chlorine in the pool due to a failure at Microsoft

In Brühl, Germany, 15 guests at the Ling Bao hotel in Phantasialand Park complained of health problems after visiting the pool. The reason was the high content of chlorine, which the hotel did not notice due to a failure in the work of Microsoft services, told WDR management of the park.

In a particular case, a malfunction in the Outlook email program affected. The sauna security system signaled a high chlorine content via email, but no one saw it.

Due to complaints from hotel guests, rescuers and the fire department were called. 13 guests complained of respiratory irritation, as a result, the number of victims rose to 15. According to WDR, four people were taken to hospital, one of them remained for observation due to a moderate injury.

On Thursday, November 12, Microsoft reported a global outage that disrupted the cloud email service Exchange Online and other Microsoft 365 products. Downdetector reported more than 100,000 complaints about Outlook. The company said the failure was caused by a technical malfunction not related to cyberattacks or the actions of AI agents.

By November 14, Microsoft announced that it was restoring work.