Marine Pollution Bulletin, Vol. 14, No. 7, pp. 241-2,42, 1983 Printed in Great Britain

If You Can' t See It, It' s Safe The traditional summer holiday season is upon us. Despite the impression that the entire human population of northern Europe migrates to the Mediterrean, substantial numbers still go to the Atlantic and North Sea coasts and immerse themselves in the icy waters there. But whatever the water temperature, a proportion of the holiday-makers will have their vacation tarnished when they succumb to gastric disorders or worse. For many years, the English took the view that this sort of thing happened only on the continent. It was a reflection of the primitive plumbing and a natural and suitable penalty for venturing abroad. British coastal resorts strongly supported this attitude. For some time, however, it has been clear that all is not well with British bathing beaches and holiday-makers can no more be guaranteed a trouble-flee vacation at them than they can anywhere else.

The cause of the trouble is the discharge of untreated sewage to sea by coastal towns. As long ago as 1970, the report of a Government Working Party, Out o f sight, out of mind, while supporting the marine disposal of wastes, recommended that "crude sewage should only be dis- charged after screening, comminution and through diffusers on long outfalls, when siting has been determined after a comprehensive study of local factors". The aim of course is to take advantage of the sea's capacity to degrade organic wastes safely and avoid problems of sewage disposal on land, but at the same time to prevent the sewage returning to the shore.

These are admirable sentiments, but the practice is much less satisfactory and although that is thoroughly well known, not much has been done to put things right. A Bulletin editorial eight years ago (Mar. Pollut. Bull., 1975, 6, 113-114) commented on a report about the state of bathing beaches by the British Consumers' Association. The Association had made a survey in 1972 and found that two out of three coastal outfalls discharged completely untreated sewage, six out of ten discharged at or above low water mark, and four out of ten coastal sewerage authori- ties admitted to having had sewage on or near their beaches during the previous year. Between then and the 1975 editorial, only 18 out of 200 outfalls that had been considered unsatisfactory had been substantially improved. Department of the Environment statistics in 1973 (the last official report on the subject) showed that only 30 out of the 333 principal outfalls discharging sewage to the coastal waters of England and Wales extended more than 300 yards below water mark, and 85°7o discharged at positions between high water mark and 200 yards below low water mark. Fifteen outfalls actually discharged above high water mark.

A survey made in 1981 by the Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors revealed that still 58°7o of the principal coastal outfalls in England and Wales were at or above high water mark. In the preceding ten years only 46 outfalls had been constructed, at least 37 of which replaced

0025-326X/83 $3.00 + 0.00 Pergamon Press L i d

one or more unsatisfactory outfalls. Others have been improved by the addition of screening and/or macerating plant. A few biological treatment plants have been con- structed but the Federation concluded that basically the situation has remained the same for the last 50 years.

The Coastal Anti-Pollution League was formed as a local pressure group in 1956 at Gosport because the town's sewage was discharged near a popular bathing beach and there was a common fear that poliomyelitis was spread by bathing in sewage-contaminated water. The League for over 20 years has published a Golden List of beaches that have a reasonable chance of being clean and free from visible pollution. The list has lengthened but slowly over the years; in the 1983 list, only 83 of 158 resort beaches surveyed in England and Wales qualified. More seriously, many of the more popular resorts never appear in it. The EEC Bathing Water Directive of 1975, designed to set minimum bacteriological standards for sea bathing, has certainly not helped to improve those beaches.

British lethargy in these matters goes back to an earlier view that sewage contamination of bathing water is not, in itself, hazardous. A Medical Research Council study con- cluded in 1959 "unless water is so fouled as to be aestheti- cally revolting, there is little evidence to suggest that bathing in sea contaminated with sewage is a risk to public health". Or, in the words of the old sanitary engineers' adage " i f you cannot see it, it's safe". Pathogens, it was thought, do not survive long in seawater and, in any case, bathers do not drink seawater, contaminated or not. The principal risk was from eating shellfish which had grown in sewage-contaminated waters. Bivalves, though not crus- taceans, feed by filtering enormous quantities of seawater and they may well trap sewage particles or even enteric bacteria. Given a clean source of shellfish there should be no trouble.

The EEC Directive attracted much criticism in Britain at the time it was introduced. The philosophy of laying down upper limits for coliform organisms and faecal coli in bathing waters, with no attempt to relate them to health or aesthetics, received short shrift from Lord Ashby in the House of Lords' debate on the subject. Dr B. Moore, who was Chairman of the (UK) Joint Committee on the Medical Aspects of Water Quality set up by the Department of the Environment and Department of Health and Social Security, was equally critical of technical aspects of meas- uring bacteriological standards incorporated in the Directive (Mar. Pollut. Bull., 1977, 8, 269-272). Since the definition of 'bathing beaches' was left to the member states, this allowed the UK to limit them to those where more than 500 people could be seen in the water at any one time, or 1500 per mile, on one particular day in late summer 1979. This was effective in limiting the number of 'Eurobeaches' to 27 out of the 500 or so where bathing actually takes place. Major resorts such as Blackpool, Brighton and Ramsgate slipped through the net, but some obscure places like Oddicombe in South Devon and Fistral Bay in Cornwall, unknown to all but a small number of people, were included. For better or worse, all these 'Eurobeaches' must reach the EEC Directive Standards by 1985, but 13 of the 27 have still failed to do so. Oddly, the Department of the Environment regarded that survey in 1979 as a once and for all exercise and there is no provision for undes-

241

Marine Pollution Bulletin

ignated beaches to be added to the list, should the local authority wish.

Reluctance to be designated a bathing beach within terms of the Directive may be justified if, in fact, sewage contamination of bathing water, as distinct from contam- ination of shellfish, is not a material hazard in British waters. Some resorts clearly take this view. Blackpool's Director of Environmental Health, for example, is quoted as describing the EEC standards as excessive and idealistic and saying that the resort decided against Eurobeach designation because it would have involved capital ex- penditure of £25m to meet the standards.

But are the standards so idealistic? Faecal contamination is usually measured by the number of coliform bacteria present in a sample of water. Coliforms are themselves not pathogenic but are always present in faeces; it is assumed that they will give a fair measure of the presence of patho- genic bacteria and viruses, though the precise relationship will depend on public health standards in the coastal areas. Evidence is growing that pathogens and particularly viruses are more resistant to destruction by natural causes in seawater than coliform organisms are. If so, the bacterial standards of the EEC Directive may understate, rather than exaggerate, the health risks.

Viral hepatitis has now almost reached epidemic prop- ortions in the United Kingdom and the consumption of

shellfish from contaminated waters has been implicated in a number of cases. The question of whether bathing in contaminated waters contributes to the spread of this and other disease, once answered firmly in the negative, is now a little more open. While swimmers do not drink seawater, there is no doubt that nearly all bathers swallow some. A survey in New York suggests that seabathers on sewage- contaminated beaches suffer a higher frequency of enteric disease within a week or two than those bathing on uncon- taminated beaches. The work is perhaps not conclusive, but there are straws in the wind and all are pointing in the same direction.

Coastal Local Authorities in Britain are beginning to wake up to the fact that it may be good publicity to advertise a clean bill of health for their beaches. It has not escaped notice that some towns on the French Riviera now advertise their water quality and routinely publish the results of their bacteriological monitoring, along with temperature, sunshine and rainfall records. The British Local Authorities may now be encouraged to do likewise by the fact that sewage treatment and discharges are the responsibility of the Regional Water Authorities and not, as previously, the Local Authorities themselves. The record then was not good, and is only marginally better now. There are good reasons, though, for thinking again about discharge of untreated sewage near bathing beaches.

R. B. C L A R K

unfortunately from the study of the interim report, we have not. ' '

Further Depletion of British Fish Stocks Feared A government report on the use of anchored gill and tangle nets in the sea fisheries of England and Wales has been criticized by two angling clubs' pollution officers. Victor Lilygreen and Bryan Meade claim that unless the interim report from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is chailenged"the blas~ acceptance of an increase in fixed netting to what will become inevitably a catastrophic level, is in danger of appearing in the final draf t ." They have produced their own assessment of the interim report and sent it to concerned Members of Parliament, urging them to challenge the Ministry's finding.

Lilygreen and Meade claim that the report suffers from "tunnel vision" and point out: "There was no indication made of the effect on fish stocks that could arise from the forecast rise in escalation of fixed net f ishing. . , no mention made of proposing a maximum sustainable yield for any or all species . . . no mention of calculating a takeable annual catch.

"Without such consideration, a constant fishing effort on a species can and does result in the species becoming depleted to the extent where it is no longer a viable prop- osition to fish for it.

"The North Sea herring was a classical example of this practice. We hopefully have learned from that experience -

25 Years On IMO is 'Effective' Criticisms that the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has 'no teeth' have been rejected by secretary- general C. P. Srivastava who said that IMO, which this year celebrated its 25th anniversary, has developed in such a way that " the whole world recognizes that it is an org- anization that works."

He rejected complaints that IMO had moved too slowly in securing the entry into force of pollution prevention conventions. He pointed out that the Organization's member states are all sovereign and it is they alone who enforce treaty instruments in respect of their own ships. The entry into force of conventions depended upon the action of those governments.

Mr Srivastava said " W e now have 28 international conventions and protocols incorporating standards on nearly every aspect of shipping. These standards have all been developed within a reasonable time. There has not been a single conference organized by this Organization which has failed and there has been no wastage of effort ."

Achievements of I M O - f o r m e r l y known as the Inter- Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization ( IMCO)- inc lude the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973, as modified by its Protocol of 1978, which will enter into force on 2 October this year.

Conventions adopted by IMO have resulted in the estab-

242