How clean are our waters?
With the summer season under way GÜLDEREN ÖZTANSU asks: how clean are our bathing waters?
WITH temperatures rising, a dip in the pool or sea is the perfect way to cool down. But how clean are the waters you are swimming in? Every year the Health Ministry tests samples of water taken from beaches and swimming pools around the TRNC and publishes the results on their website. Inspectors check for two things: E. Coli and Intestinal enterococci (IE), using criteria based on a 2006 EU bathing water quality directive. These are bacteria that show if there is faecal matter in the water, which can come from sources such as sewage.
New results for April and May for coastal bathing waters – results for public pools are not yet available – showed that the majority of areas had “excellent” bathing water quality, meaning there was very little or no traces of the bacteria.
However the figures for both April and May revealed high levels of E. Coli on the left side of the Vuni Palace Hotel beach in Karakum, Girne, at 2,400 cfu (colony forming units) per 100ml of water, nearly five times the maximum 500 cfu/100ml amount deemed safe for bathing.
The same area had more than twice the acceptable amount of E. Coli in June 2020, as did the Ada Beach Hotel beach near Alsancak.
Data for the Karpaz region in April 2021 showed that there was 600 cfu/100ml of IE in water samples taken from Kaplıca Public Beach in the Mehmetçik district – more than three times the safe limit of 185 cfu/100ml.
However, the ministry has been accused of failing to publish and publicise the bathing water analysis results in a timely manner.
Last year the test results for June were not published until August, and data so far this year was only released after pressure from the Chamber of Environmental Engineers (ÇMO), according to its head Nilden Bektaş Erhürman.
“It’s not enough to carry out these tests, they should be shared with the press and the public,” she told Cyprus Today.
“It’s not enough to just upload them on to the website. . . Do it [announce the results] every month, every week.”
The World Health Organization states that these bacteria can lead to life-threatening diseases including haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), especially in young children and the elderly, while the ÇMO warns about diarrhoeal diseases, urinary tract infections, meningitis, peritonitis, mastitis, septicaemia and gram-negative pneumonia.
Last month the ÇMO issued a press release urging the government to carry out and release microbiological test results as people were beginning to flock to beaches.
The Health Ministry subsequently released the data for April and May covering bathing waters in the Gazimağusa, Karpaz and Girne districts, which highlighted the high levels of E. Coli on the left side of the Vuni Palace Hotel beach and IE at Kaplıca Public Beach.
Mrs Erhürman said, however, that the Health Ministry did not accompany the release of the data with any announcement or warnings to public.
“Have you seen a warning in the press? We didn’t see this in the press, no sort of warning,” she said.
“We haven’t come across anything that warns people. We have received a negative response [from the Health Ministry] to all our cooperation initiatives in the past year.
“At these times, where immunity is important as we are in a fight with Covid-19, public health shouldn’t be risked like this.
“Our laws limit our ability as a professional chamber . . . to conduct tests; we do not have access to a lab to carry out these analyses.
“We told the Health Ministry that if they won’t carry out these tests or publish the results then we want to volunteer to do them. We have everything that’s needed including the personnel. We are trained to collect proper samples, have knowledge of the correct depth of collection point, etc. They just needed to show us a lab but they refused.”
The ÇMO still carried out preliminary, observational research and released their findings.
Mrs Erhürman added that “the Environmental Protection Agency should be informed” about the evidence of faecal matter found in some areas and should launch “an investigation, penalise the culprits and take the required precautions for
dangerous areas”. The Health Ministry test results state that “those [locations] whose analysis results are above the limits are followed up” but no-one at the Health Ministry was able to confirm to Cyprus Today if this has been done.