Recreational water and health: Managing risk

How authorities can identify water quality hazards and protect people from risks.

On this page

• Understanding hazards
• Monitoring water quality
• Managing beach sands
• Public notifications

Understanding hazards

It's important to understand the potential hazards in recreational water areas. Authorities can help protect people from these hazards with:

• water quality management plans
• tools such as surveys and source tracking

Environmental health and safety surveys

These surveys identify sources of fecal contamination and other hazards at the beach and in the surrounding areas. Surveys collect information such as:

• weather conditions
• number of people, birds and dogs
• location of storm drain overflow pipes
• litter and other debris, like rocks or logs

This information helps authorities prioritize areas to monitor and identify how to improve water quality and safety.

Microbial source tracking

Microbial source tracking shows the different sources of fecal contamination in a water area, which:

• helps authorities understand the potential risks to human health
• can help target actions to reduce these risks

These methods detect markers that tell us about the source of the contaminant. They are more complex than routine monitoring methods and require technical expertise. Authorities usually conduct these studies with scientific institutions.

Monitoring water quality

Routine water quality monitoring helps protect people from water quality hazards.

Pathogenic microorganisms in fecal wastes are the primary hazards for many recreational water areas. It's difficult and expensive to test for these pathogens, so authorities check for other bacteria. The ‘fecal indicator' bacteria that are tested for are E. coli and enterococci. They are mostly harmless, but a few types of these bacteria can make you sick.

The guidelines for Canadian recreational water quality recommend guideline values for these bacteria in recreational waters. When concentrations are above these values, there is an increased risk of getting infected and sick while swimming or playing in the water.

Beach managers and local authorities can use different methods to test the level of E. coli and enterococci in recreational water samples. It can take 18 to 24 hours to receive the results of culture-based methods. These are the most common methods used at Canadian beaches. Newer molecular methods can provide results in a few hours. However, these require specialized scientific equipment and training and aren't yet widely used at Canadian beaches.

Water quality monitoring programs may check for other water quality hazards, such as cyanobacteria blooms.

Learn more about:

• Cyanobacteria

Managing beach sands

Managing beach sand is important as:

• children often play in the sand at the water's edge
• beach users often spend more time on the beach than in the water

Beach managers can help keep beaches safe by:

• removing litter that can attract animals to the area
• installing physical barriers to discourage wildlife, such as:
  • fences
  • gull nets
  • animal-proof garbage cans
• restricting pet access at public beaches during the operating season
• removing debris to reduce contamination
• changing the slope or shape of the beach to improve drainage

Public notifications

It's important to communicate with the public when managing recreational water quality. Authorities may post public notifications:

• at the beach
• on provincial, municipal and other websites
• on social media
• through other media, such as:
  • radio
  • television
  • newspapers

These notifications may include:

• warning signs or messages, such as:
  • swimming advisories (swimming should be avoided but the beach is open)
  • beach closures (area closed to all recreational activities)
• cautionary information, such as the presence of re-occurring cyanobacterial blooms
• types of activities allowed at the recreational water area, such as primary or secondary contact activities

Some jurisdictions also use beach classification systems to tell the public about the level of risk at a recreational water area. These systems assess the hazards at a beach and then assign it an overall rating. Beaches that use classifications should post these ratings using the same methods as for other notifications.