Environment Unit research- 'Panorama: Britain's Dirty Beaches'

For my environmental unit I started to become interested in the effect we are having on nature similar to my object unit I have been looking at the photographer Andy Hughes, William Eggleston & Joel Sternfeld. However my ideas have become more focussed on the effects that sewage and the weather has on human health and nature after watching the programmes 'Panorama: Britain's Dirty Beaches' and 'Inside Out (South East) 17/10/2011'. 

Panorama & Inside Out looks at the effects that CSOs (Combined Sewage & Overflow) have on the health of people that visit the beach as well as nature eg. sealife & plants. 

- It was said that after visiting 43% of the beaches in the UK there is a 1 in 20 chance that you will contract gastroenteritis (also known as gastric flu & stomach flu) the symptoms are severe inflammation of the stomach & small intestine resulting in diarrhoea & vomiting. It is transferred by contact with contaminated food and water. 

 

- Pollution is increasing as the climate changes eg. wet weather increasing, this is because the sewage treatment plants become overwhelmed after heavy rain and have to release waste water into the sea before it has been treated. 

- They must use the CSOs as overflow pipes.

- There are over 20,000 CSOs in the UK and over 700 pipes on the beaches and rivers on the South East coast alone.  

- Around 45% of beaches deemed as 'Good' in the 'Good Beach Guide' (www.goodbeachguide.co.uk) have CSOs near enough to them to effect the water quality; this is why the quality over the past couple of years have been decreasing. 

 

- By the end of 2012, the local councils of bathing beaches will be obliged to give daily information about the quality of the water and risks of bathing and being on the beach.

- It has been found that CSOs are effecting the sealife, in Panorama they highlighted the increase in the death of cockles caused by bacteria in untreated sewage.

In my work I want to highlight the effects that sewage treatment company's CSO pipes are having on different aspects of the beach from sealife to the landscape to humans by capturing different scenes and events. 

In the programme it was also highlighted how ignorant people were to the problem saying things such as they thought that it didn't happen anymore and they were totally unaware that that sort of thing was done. Therefore I really hope to capture moments wwhere people are obviously very oblivious of the occurrence, possibly try and reflect the idea in the image by having the pipes as a very obscure part of the scene.

I have become more and more passionate about this as I remember as I child playing near by to pipes I was unaware of as CSOs and therefore I worry about the effects this has on not only humans but the environment, literally and visually.