Tracy&James | Sunday, 16 June 2024
This week there have been several news papers articles about water pollution. Many have been reporting about the over 6,000 incidents of English water companies expelling sewage from their plants during 'dry' spells within 2022, which is illegal in the UK. The companies are denying this of course and stating that the readings are a result of faulty monitors, however I'm not sure that they realise that this is worse. Faulty monitors, reporting incorrectly for a whole year, indicates their lack of concern about checking our water systems – if that is the real reason and not just an excuse by the companies. When I looked at the map of England as to where these incidents were located, I was concerned to note that many were on the Welsh-English border, and I wondered how the Welsh water authority had to deal with these incidents. Whereas the English water companies are profit led, Welsh Water is not. That said, they still have a poor record of pollution and many of the Welsh water systems are also as polluted as the English ones.
There are other articles I have read about people falling ill following triathlons. The first occurred in July 2023 in Sunderland where almost 90 contestants fell ill with diarrhoea and sickness following the open-water swimming event. Another occurred more recently with many participants who swam in the river Thames falling ill, some of whom went to hospital. This was following the organisers of both events checking the water prior to the event and stating it was safe to swim in – which it clearly was not. So how accurate is this monitoring and why is it difficult to determine if a water system is safe or not. I'm not an expert in monitoring water but I am very knowledgeable in monitoring air for contaminants. The main concern I would have when siting the air monitoring equipment would be to attempt to determine the potential sources of the pollutants and the air flows in the area to be checked, so as to assess the best spot to collect a sample of the airborne material.
I can imagine in a water system this is very difficult especially as the sources of the contaminants can be varied and as we all know from fishing rivers and the sea, the water flow can vary dramatically dependant on the surrounding foliage, water depth, ground type, etc. Hence you would need to take many samples throughout the watercourse to attempt to assess the levels of contaminants. The other problem is knowing what contaminants to test for. When I did air sampling I usually knew or had a pretty good idea of the pollutants I wanted to assess and therefore knew the type of material I wanted to collect the samples on and the type on chemical analysis best suited for them. Also I knew for some contaminants there would be a 'shelf-life' of the sample in which to get it tested before the sample degraded. Plus, the way the sample was handled could be instrumental in whether I got a correct result – collecting dry particulates on a dry filter could be prone to knocks where the material could be displaced and hence not be analysed, hence giving a lower and incorrect analytical result.
The best way to test was often using something that would measure in real-time or collect a sample in a media that would change colour if certain materials were present. I'm not sure if this is possible for water samples, however it would be interesting to know. One of the newspaper articles covered wild swimming spots and that last year out of 423 English bathing sites, 405 only met the minimum standard whereas the number rated 'Poor' rose to to its highest level since 2015. This can only indicate that things are getting worse rather than better. These sites are tested by the Environment Agency between May and September and the samples have to be analysed within 24 hours for two different types of bacteria – e. coli and intestinal enterococci. These pathogens are used to indicate the possible presence of faecal matter in the water. Too much of these means a 'Poor' rating which results in a sign being erected to warn people not to swim. I would also hope that the EA do more than just put up a notice. The law states that if a designated bathing water site fails, then the water company, the local authority and the EA have to work together to improve that water quality. However as the number of such sites rated 'Poor' is increasing then clearly they are not doing enough. Interestingly if a site has a 'Poor' designation for 5 years in a row then it loses both its designation and testing regime.
The organisers of the triathlons, where people fell ill, stated that they had taken samples in accordance with British Triathlon guidelines in advance of the event and found the water was 'safe'. However the UK Health Security Agency, who investigate such issues, noted that microbiological testing of water can be 'challenging' and that 'safe' results do not exclude the possibility that contact with contaminated water was the possible cause of illness of the swimmers.
Interestingly the water companies responsible for the watercourses noted that pollution in the water and river health is not their sole responsibility - “there are many factors which influence river quality including pollutants, animal faeces from livestock and wildlife, along with run-off from farms and roads. It would therefore be misinformed to automatically conclude that this is a result of their activities.”
This statement demonstrates the problems we have when dealing with the health of the watercourses in the UK, no one agency is wholly responsible and they are all clearly not doing enough to improve the water quality. They all seem keen to pass the buck to each other when a pollution incident is reported. There needs to be more of a co-ordinated approach to managing water health whether it be in the rivers, lakes or the sea.
Cheers
Tracy