Bay Watch : Major Southland Study Seeks to Learn if It’s Safe to Swim in the Sea

Oh denizens of Los Angeles’ storied beaches--prepare to stick out your collective tongue and say, “Ahhhh!” Or at least answer a few questions for the good doctor.

Beginning Thursday, a USC epidemiologist will lead a team of other scientists and student interviewers to some of the region’s most popular beaches to conduct one of the largest studies of its kind in this country.

The blue-shirted, clipboard-toting survey teams will patrol Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica beaches all summer long in hopes of answering one of the region’s most vexing public health questions: Is it safe to swim in Santa Monica Bay?

The $868,000 survey will lend scientific rigor to subject matter that has long been the province of coastal lore. Accounts of nauseated surfers, lifeguards with flu symptoms and toddlers with rashes have gained such wide currency that surveys have found that more than half of Los Angeles County residents believe they risk illness swimming in the bay.

By the end of this summer, the research team hopes to question 12,000 people on the beach, following up about 10 days later with telephone calls to see if swimmers have become ill. The results will be tabulated to see if there is any detectable increase in illness for those who swim in polluted waters, compared to those who swim in relatively cleaner stretches of surf.

“We want to see, first of all, if there is a risk at all to swimming in the bay,” said Robert Haile, the USC epidemiologist leading the effort. “And if there is a risk, how high is it and how is that related to the water quality, which we will also be testing every day.”

The study is being funded by a consortium of government and private agencies that were brought together in the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project, the organization that last year completed a strategy for cleaning up the bay.

The health study was placed at the top of a list of $68 million in proposed projects because of the persistent health safety questions posed by many of the 50 million people who visit local beaches each year.

“There are a heck of a lot of people who think you can’t swim anywhere in the bay, because they think it’s so polluted. And there are others who think you can swim anywhere, even right in urban storm runoff,” said Mark Gold, executive director of the environmental group Heal the Bay. “This study is so important, to tell people whether and where it is safe.”

The current consensus on the need for such a survey, though, was a long time coming. County health officials for years downplayed the health risks of ocean swimming. Sewage and other pollutants commonly associated with disease were believed to enter the bay in only a few isolated breakdowns.

But that changed in 1990 and in subsequent years when research supported by the Restoration Project found that viruses associated with human waste were being spewed into the ocean from several storm drains. The findings focused concern on the drains as the most serious source of ocean pollution. Drains spill into the bay at dozens of locations.

Next, the project’s 1992 public opinion survey found that 52% of the county’s residents felt they might get sick from swimming in the bay--a feeling that swept across all ethnic and socioeconomic groups.

The task for the Restoration Project over the last three years has been to cobble together funding and service donations from a variety of sources, including the city and county of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Chevron, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, Heal the Bay and a hospital district representing Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach.

Because of its considerable scope, the project this summer will make Los Angeles a sort of Mecca for epidemiologists and their fellow travelers, microbiologists and statisticians. It also will employ up to 50 English- and Spanish-speaking interviewers, paid $10 to $13 an hour--most of them college students on summer break.

The surveyors will be distinguished by their powder-blue “Santa Monica Bay Beach Study” T-shirts, brown baseball caps and photo identification cards.

Their work will focus on the three stretches of shore, near storm channels, where high levels of bacterial pollution have frequently been found--at Surfrider Beach in Malibu, at the base of Chautauqua Boulevard in Pacific Palisades and about a mile south of Santa Monica Pier.

Toe-dippers and waders need not apply here. Only those whose faces or heads have gone underwater will be sought out by the interviewers. At the same time, scientists will sample water throughout the survey zone, so that illnesses that might be detected can be tagged to particular pollutants. Those who swim or surf routinely in the bay won’t be questioned, because it would be impossible to link their illnesses to a particular day of exposure.

The 12,000 initial interviews are needed, Haile said, to ensure that enough beach-goers can be contacted later to make the survey results statistically significant.

On Tuesday, interviewers fanned out on Santa Monica and Palisades beaches to conduct practice surveys and plan how to divide particular stretches of the shore. They found a mostly receptive and curious audience, including subjects from as far away as England, Germany and France.

Scientists said they will call even to Europe to follow up.

Devron Appleberry, 28, was typical of the enthusiastic students picked for the survey job. “I’m a native of L.A. and came to the beach all my life,” Appleberry said. “This is a way for me to do something important. And it’s a fun way to make money.”

Health officials hope that the results, once published late this year or early in 1996, will help refine their directives to the public about where and when it is safe to swim and, perhaps, lead to more definitive water quality tests.

The county Department of Health Services now advises swimmers not to enter the ocean for three days after rain, when pollutants are flushed in vast quantities into the ocean. They also recommend staying away from flowing storm drains, even in dry weather.

But methods of testing for pollution have remained stagnant for many years--focusing on the presence of E. coli bacteria. Water and health officials now generally agree that E. coli organisms are too common--they are as readily found in lawn clippings as sewage--to provide a useful measure of dangerous contamination.

“This research will help us to see if the way we monitor the ocean is correct,” said Paul Papanek, chief of the toxics epidemiology program for the county health department. “We don’t really know that all the tests we do, which cost about half a million dollars a year, are the best measure of ocean safety.”

Any new standards emerging from the survey will be of value nationwide, said Gold of Heal the Bay. “The ramifications go far beyond Santa Monica Bay,” said Gold, himself an environmental scientist. “The whole country is using these [ E. coli] standards for safe swimming. And what is the point if these indicators don’t really work?”

Gold, Papanek and others said they do not want to prejudge the survey results. But they believe that the real risk has been inflated by repeated reports of pollution and sick swimmers.

“If the study goes without technical problems and we can show that people who go swimming don’t get sick, that is a very good message to send out,” Papanek said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Bay Health Watch The Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project is sponsoring a long-awaited survey, beginning Thursday, on the health risks of swimming in Santa Monica Bay.

* PEOPLE TO BE QUESTIONED: Anyone swimming, or at least getting their face wet, at any of three beaches.

* WHERE: Surfrider Beach in Malibu, Will Rogers State Beach near Chautauqua Boulevard in Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica State Beach near Ashland Avenue, one mile south of the pier.

* HOW MANY: 12,000 people on the beach and as many as possible in telephone follow-ups.

* WHAT KIND OF QUESTIONS: Initially to determine amount of exposure to water and to eliminate people who are in the ocean with unusual frequency. Follow-ups will inquire about illnesses, particularly stomach disorders, skin rashes and ear infections.

* WHEN: Thursday through late September or early October.

* RESULTS: Should be available by late this year or early 1996.

* GOAL: To answer the long-asked question: Is it safe to swim in Santa Monica Bay? And to set new ocean testing standards for safe swimming.

* SPONSOR: The Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project, an alliance of government, business and educational organizations that has drawn up a $68-million plan for cleaning the bay.