[HEMICALS I hose-down after your swim? SOCIALIST Organiser…]

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HEMICALS I hose-down after your swim?

SOCIALIST Organiser readers may have seen something in the national press on the state of Britain's beaches.

The source of those reports (and this article) is a survey in the New Scientist ('The Unspeakable Beaches of Britain' , by Fred Pearce: 16th July).

Basically, the problem is that, in medieval fashion, the majority of coastal towns pipe raw sewage straight into the sea. Some 400 sewage outfalls dispose of sewage from six million people in summer, more than half of them discharging their raw sewage onto the beach or into shallow water.

It doesn't take much thought to work out that with winds and tides, a lot of this crap will just get blown back to land before it has a chance to be broken down or made harmless by natural processes. And this is exactly what does happen.

About 30 per cent of the beaches surveyed by the Coastal Anti-Pollution League are at risk of sewage pollution, and this includes most major resorts.

What does this actually mean for those who go to the seaside during their hard-won and meagre holidays? One couple who wrote to CAPL found that during a holiday in Lowestoft they observed "contraceptives washed up on the &sand, turds floating in the surf, and a nasty taste to the water'! The man became ill with a bug found in faeces (shit) and the woman caught cystitis.

The beach at New Brighton, near Liverpool, liberally scattered with 'faecal matter, contraceptives, fat balls, vegetable wastes, household refuse, and sewer scum"

At Blackpool the sewage outfall discharges raw sewage overflows straight onto the beach. Other popular resorts with problems like this include Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Bridlington, Scarborough, Weston-super-Mare, Margate, and Broadstairs.

Industrial pollution on top of sewage pollution affects areas like Swansea Bay (with the worst mercury and lead contamination in Britain) K and Durham.

Campaigners against polluted beaches hoped for improvements when the Common Market published its bathing water directive in 1976. This set a limit of 2000 coliform bacteria of faecal origin per 100 ml (about one-fifth of a pint). (Coliform bacteria can cause gastro enteritis and cystitis but are perfectly harmless in the large intestine, where they are normally found).

Full figures aren't available for Britain, but it seems likely that about 40% of all beaches were outside this limit, and it would cost several thousand million pounds to bring them up to scratch. Not likely, given the cuts!

So top civil servants found a way of getting round the threat. The EEC required a list of beaches where swimming is 'traditionally practised by a large number of bathers" and insisted that the directive would have to be obeyed there by 1985.

You would probably guess that Blackpool would be on the list of 'Eurobeaches' • Wrong! Blackpool would have cost $25 million to get it below the limit, so it was excluded. Also not on the list are Eastbourne, Hastings, and Brighton! In fact there are only 25 beaches on the list.

Dangerous

Is coastal pollution merely unpleasant, or is it actually dangerous? US surveys show significant increases in cases of vomiting, diarrhoea, nausea, fever and stomach aches, among swimmers in polluted waters. At 1000 bacteria per 100 ml about five per cent of swimmers got gastro-intestinal diseases. And this is only half the EEC limit!

So, as this government cuts still further, and as the overloaded sewage system gets more and more decrepit, Britain's beaches, source of low-cost recreation for the working class, are going to get filthier and more dangerous, unless we refuse to put up with it.

Perhaps Socialist Organiser supporters should organise collections of beach muck for delivery to the doorsteps of councils and government departments responsible for this situation.