Institute of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health
Abstract
Introduction: Quality of bathing water is of key importance
for bathers’ health, mainly due to the fact, that each
year millions of people use bathing sites as places for recreation
and sport activities. Most of the bathing sites are of
adequate quality of water, but still there are cases of health
risk because bathing water is polluted. One of the main
health risk factor in bathing water are cyanobacteria and
their blooms. Cyanobacteria are microorganisms of morphological
features of bacteria and algae. They live in
colonies, which in large quantities show up as streaks,
dense foam on the water surface. The aim of this paper
was to assess the impact of cyanobacteria blooms on health
regarding bathing water quality in Poland. Materials and
methods: Assessment covered all bathing sites in Poland
supervised by Polish National Sanitary Inspection (PIS) in
the period from 2007 to 2009. The base was data collected
during bathing water monitoring conducted by PIS and
their formal decisions of bathing bans introduced in
response to revealed bathing water pollution. Results and
discussion: The results of assessment indicate, that about
one-fourth of all bathing bans in Poland was due to
cyanobacteria blooms. Conclusions: Every fifth bathing
sites located on artificial lake or water reservoir and every
tenth on the sea bathing sites were polluted. Average period
of bathing ban due to cyanobacteria blooms in Poland
varies. Relatively the shortest bathing bans were observed
on the sea bathing sites (no longer than one week on average).
Much longer were bathing bans on lakes and artificial
lakes (one month on average)