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A new report has some unfortunate news for U.S. beachgoers hitting the water on vacation this summer.
The Environment America Research and Policy Center (EARPC) studied beaches last year, and the report found that over half of American beaches had potentially dangerous levels of fecal bacteria at some point.
The new report contains an analysis of data from 2,620 beaches across 29 states and Puerto Rico. It found that almost 60 percent of beaches studied had fecal bacterial levels that exceeded the “beach action value” on at least one day in 2018.
The beach action value is a threshold used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for making beach notification decisions. The water tested at a total of 605 beaches was found to be potentially unsafe on at least 25 percent of the days.
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Illinois found themselves at the bottom of the list. All beaches tested in those states were unsafe on at least one day, if not more than that.
