Standards for Recreational Water
Quality
FR/G0005
November 2007
Summary
Bathing water has been recognised as carrying potential risks for
decades. These risks, other than physical risks such as drowning,
mostly arise as a consequence of the pollution of recreational water
with micro-organisms that are present in faeces. Although there have
been microbiological standards for recreational waters for many years
in both North America and Europe, these have not been soundly based and
they lacked epidemiological evidence that could support the argument
that they were health-evidence-based. In order to improve this
situation, epidemiological studies were carried out in the UK to
quantify the potential health effects of bathing in recreational
waters. These studies provide a scientific basis for developing
standards based on practical measurements of contamination and the
defined health risks which, mostly, relate to health outcomes with low
levels of severity. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recognised
that more information is needed from both fresh waters and from
non-temperate conditions. However, the WHO has utilised the UK
information to develop Guidelines for Safe Recreational Water
Environments which were published in 2003. The approach used in those
Guidelines offers a means of deriving standards that seek to limit
health risks to clearly defined and acceptably low levels.
This approach has been the primary basis for the development of a new
Bathing Water Directive for Europe. The new microbiological criteria
for marine waters outlined in the 2006 Bathing Water Directive are, in
part, based on the WHO criteria, but the derivation of the freshwater
standards in the Directive is, at least partly, based on a German
replication of the UK epidemiological research protocol.
Real time management of risk, through prediction of bathing water
quality, has been suggested by the WHO in the 2003 Guidelines and is
accommodated in the new Bathing Water Directive. Prototype systems,
using electronic signs, are deployed in Scotland and this approach
offers considerable scope particularly where microbiological pollution
is episodically associated with rainfall causing runoff from livestock
farming areas.
There is a review of the 2006 Bathing Water Directive criteria
scheduled for 2008 and this may offer an opportunity to accommodate new
scientific information from European Union (EU) studies coordinated by
one of the authors of this report, from recently completed work and
work underway, and to reconsider any inconsistencies identified.
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