Sea swimming raises risk of earaches and stomach bugs

SWIMMING in the sea raises the risk of earache because of polluted water, researchers have warned.

The University of Exeter Medical School found that people who swim or take part in water sports are far more likely to experience a host of ailments.

Sea bathing doubled the odds of reporting general ear ailments, and the odds of reporting earache rose by 77 per cent. For gastrointestinal illnesses, the odds increased by 29 per cent.

Researchers said that despite significant investment resulting in an improvement water quality in recent years, seawater is still polluted from sources including industrial waste, sewage and run-off from farmland.

Dr Anne Leonard, of the University of Exeter, said: “In high-income countries like the UK, there is a perception that there is little risk to health of spending time in the sea.

“However, our paper shows that spending time in the sea does increase the probability of developing illnesses, such as ear ailments and problems involving the digestive system, such as stomach ache and diarrhoea.”

“We think that this indicates that pollution is still an issue affecting swimmers in some of the world’s richest countries.”

The researchers reviewed 19 studies involving 120,000 people since 1961, from the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and Norway. They found that sea bathers were 86 per cent more likely to suffer from any illness, compared with non bathers.

The research, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, is the first to evaluate the evidence that bathers are at risk of getting sick from exposure to seawater, and to quantify this risk compared with non-bathers.