Originally Published by Verywell Health
Going to the beach might seem like a great way beat this summer’s record-setting heat wave. But a new report suggests that you might want to think twice before jumping in the water at many beaches.
More than half of the beaches tested reached “potentially unsafe levels” of fecal contamination at least one day last year according to the report released earlier this month by the Environment America Research & Policy Center.
One out of every nine beaches included in the report reached this level for 25% of the days tested.
“When we go to the beach, we see crystal clear, beautiful blue water, and we think that it’s clean and safe. But we found in these in these recent reports that there is a lot of beach contamination,” Kelly Johnson-Arbor, MD, a medical toxicologist and interim executive director of the National Capital Poison Center who was not involved in the research, told Verywell.
The findings were not limited to just one part of the country. Eighty-four percent of Gulf Coast beaches, 70% of West Coast beaches, and 63% of the Great Lakes reached these potentially unsafe levels at least once in 2022.
A tool on the Environment America website shows state-by-state data if you want to see how your local beaches stack up.
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