Another major source of eye irritation in my family is sunscreen. People put it on and don't wait for it to soak into the skin or dry and then they go in the water and it "melts" into their eyes. This irritation seems to happen when other swimmers go in the water too fast after applying sunscreen too. There gets to be a thin layer of sunscreen on top of the water that causes problems for lots of people. Not scientific, but it seems to make a difference.

Also, our salt pool and our club's salt pool are much less irritating to my children's eyes. I can swim a few laps in our salt pool without goggles.