"Sarah Lambert took her usual morning swim for 40 minutes off Exmouth town beach before her volunteer shift helping disabled people get access to the water. A wheelchair user herself, Lambert's regular sea swims twice a week between the lifeboat station and HeyDays restaurant were the perfect form of exercise for her disability."
"She started vomiting later that day and was admitted to hospital suffering life-threatening sepsis after being infected by E coli and Citrobacter bacteria, both of which are commonly found in sewage."
"Anger about the state of the privatised water industry in England intensified this week after the screening of Channel 4's docudrama Dirty Business. It weaves the human tragedy of the death from E coli 0157 poisoning of eight-year-old Heather Preen in 1999, who had paddled just the other side of the Exe estuary from Lambert's swimming spot, with the unfolding of an environmental and public health crisis."
Sarah Lambert, a wheelchair user who regularly swam in the sea off Exmouth beach, contracted life-threatening sepsis after swimming in water contaminated by a sewage pipe burst in August 2024. She was hospitalized with E coli and Citrobacter bacteria infections commonly found in sewage. Her case exemplifies broader failures in England's privatized water industry, explored in Channel 4's docudrama Dirty Business, which documents three decades of underinvestment by water companies and inadequate regulatory oversight. The documentary also traces the tragic death of eight-year-old Heather Preen from E coli poisoning in 1999 near the same area. Lambert now experiences anxiety about sea swimming and is part of an environmental legal claim against South West Water.
#water-industry-contamination #public-health-crisis #sewage-pollution #regulatory-failure #environmental-justice
Read at www.theguardian.com
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