Many swimmers are unknowingly bathing in faecal matter because of slow results from water tests, a Green Party councillor has claimed.
Ossian Smyth, of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county council, said that quicker tests were required for all Dublin Bay swimming areas. He said new technologies used in the US can produce results within a day. He also said researchers in Dublin City University have designed a one-hour process for testing E. coli that gave the same readings in 96 per cent of cases as the two-day minimum method used in Ireland.
At present samples are collected from bathing spots and transported to a laboratory for microbiology analysis, which involves using cultures to test for E. coli and intestinal enterococci, bacteria that can lead to gastritis and other infections. Most local authorities in Ireland take weekly samples of the bathing water between June and September and fortnightly for the rest of the year.
“The two-day test that we use to check bathing water for pollution takes too long to give a useful warning. By the time we know that bathing is unsafe, people have been swimming in the dirty water for two days,” Mr Smyth said. “The beaches in my constituency are valuable amenities to residents as well as to our tourism industry, and every swimmer deserves to know whether they are safe before they decide to get into the water.”
He has put a motion forward to adopt improved testing for next year’s bathing season. He has also asked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to investigate the source of bathing water pollution.
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A spokeswoman for the EPA said that alternative genetically based techniques can provide an indication of E. coli counts in as little as four to six hours, but that these have been successful only where the testing laboratory is close enought to the beach.
She added the DCU test for E. coli testing appeared promising.