 A spotlight has once again been placed on water quality in the UK, after dozens of athletes at a triathlon event in Sunderland fell ill. At least 57 people ended up with sickness and diarrhoea after swimming in the sea off the coast of the Tyne and Wear city. A water quality test later showed an unusually high number of E. coli colonies in the water. The health alert came after months of concern about pollution such as sewage overflow in coastal areas and other bodies of water across the country. With many of us keen to spend summer at the beach – even with the recent miserable weather – it's important to know whether you might end up swallowing something nasty when you take a dip. So Metro has created a map with some of the current worst offenders for bathing water quality around the UK. We looked at bathing water alerts from official organisations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and compared them to the monitoring map from campaign group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) to highlight ten areas of concern. The water in Blackpool is the second-most polluted in the UK (Picture: Getty) Lundin Links in Scotland on a bright day (Picture: Getty) A stormy day in the seaside town of Scarborough, North Yorkshire (Picture: Getty) The areas, arranged in no particular order, are: Severn Mouth, Blackpool, Newcastle, Scarborough, the Wash, Clacton-on-Sea, Folkestone, Irvine, Lundin Links and Bangor. There are seven areas in England, all of which have at least one coastal spot where swimming is not advised on the Environmental Agency's Swimfo site. Experts recommend against bathing in the water at Weston-super-Mare or Burnham-on-Sea, both of which are located at the mouth of the Severn river. Blackpool North, South and Central are all highlighted by Swimfo, while SAS warns that sewage has recently been discharged in Bispham to the north of the Lancashire town. In Newcastle){kind=link}
NEWS… BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
A spotlight has once again been placed on water quality in the UK, after dozens of athletes at a triathlon event in Sunderland fell ill.
At least 57 people ended up with sickness and diarrhoea after swimming in the sea off the coast of the Tyne and Wear city.
A water quality test later showed an unusually high number of E. coli colonies in the water.
The health alert came after months of concern about pollution such as sewage overflow in coastal areas and other bodies of water across the country.