Spending more time in the surf increased risk of fever, stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea, skin infection, eye redness and other symptoms, according to the report in the American Journal of Public Health.

"These potential health risks warrant greater public health surveillance, as well as greater efforts to reduce pollutants discharged onto public beaches," say Ryan Dwight, Ph.D., and Dean B. Baker, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues.

The researchers interviewed surfers in 1998 and 1999 at two California beaches. One was North Orange County, whose watershed is one of the most developed in the world and which produces highly polluted runoff water. The other was in rural Santa Cruz County, which is farther north, less urbanized and less polluted.

"Surfers were selected as the study population because of their regular exposure to coastal waters," Baker says. In all, they interviewed 1,873 participants, asking about any illness symptoms they had experienced over the previous three months.

They also compared rainfall at the two beaches in each year and used local health department data to get coliform bacteria counts, a water pollution measure. Santa Cruz County had higher total rainfall each year compared to North Orange County, yet the latter had higher water coliform counts.

As it happened, California experienced record high precipitation in the winter of 1998, thanks to the El Nio effect. Surfers in North Orange County that year reported almost twice as many symptoms and higher rates of every symptom than those in Santa Cruz County.

By contrast, the winter of 1999 saw the opposite climate pattern, called the La Nia effect, which caused record low precipitation. Drier conditions that year produced only sli
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Contact: Dean B. Baker
dbaker@uci.edu
949-824-8641
Center for the Advancement of Health
31-Mar-2004