Third of British beaches pose health risk
More than a third of Britain’s beaches poses a health risk for bathers because of water pollution, it has emerged.
Data released by the Department of Environment (Defra) shows that 35 per cent (207) of Britain’s 587 officially designated beaches failed to meet the European ‘guideline’ standard for water quality in summer 2008.
‘Guideline’ is the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) minimum standard for safeguarding bathers’ health and this is the worst result since 2001.
Thomas Bell, Marine Conservation Society’s coastal pollution officer, said: “These latest results reflect a worrying trend toward worsening pollution on Britain’s beaches. There was a high point in 2006 when 76 per cent of beaches had good water quality, but long bouts of heavy rain over the last two summers have swept pollutants like farm fertiliser, street debris and animal waste directly from the land into rivers and the sea.
“The coast is also ringed by a network of combined sewer overflows (CSO) which discharge a mixture of storm water and raw sewage into the sea whenever the sewers flood. MCS believes that this network needs significant new investment to reduce its pollution impact, as well as new measures to tackle storm run-off from farm land and city streets.”
www.mcsuk.org
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