Cleaning Up Our Beaches

Reported July 2006

PALO ALTO, Calif. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Some scientists say they can predict when beach pollution will be the worst by monitoring the moon. And that could mean safer beaches for people all over the world.

Summer at the beach ... Fun for many college students, but these Stanford students are not building a sand castle. They're trying to figure out if the beach is safe for you and your children.

"The bacteria that I'm talking about are fecal indicator bacteria, so these are the organisms that cause beach closures," Stanford environmental engineer Alexandria Boehm, Ph.D., tells Ivanhoe.

She says the answers may not all be below your feet. She actually looked up to gather the facts. Boehm found a correlation between beach pollution, lunar cycles, and spring tides.

"The spring tides occur during the full and new moons, so during the full and new moon, the bacteria levels are higher at the beach," Boehm says. That means beachgoers are more likely to get diarrhea, skin rashes, and sore throats.

Today, health officials must wait one day for water samples to be tested before shutting down beaches. But Boehm says by the time they put up that sign, it's one day later, and the pollution event is usually gone. She says by looking at the moon, health officials could predict when pollution will be highest without that one-day delay.

The next step in the process is Boehm finding the source of the contamination. Back at the lab, she and her students test the groundwater samples. Fluorescence means contamination.

She also says decaying plants on the sand could be the source of pollution. Since spring tides are higher, they wash further up the beach and wash more contaminants into the surf.

"It's one thing to be able to predict when beach pollution levels are going to be high, but the better thing to do would be able to know what the source is so the problem can be fixed at the source," Boehm says ... And that would mean safer beaches for everyone!

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Alexandria Boehm, Ph.D.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Stanford University, CA
(650) 724-9128
ali.boehm@gmail.com

American Geophysical Union
Washington, DC 20009-1277
(800) 966-2481
http://www.agu.org

American Society for Microbiology
Washington, D.C. 20036-2904
(202) 737-3600
http://www.asm.org

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