The hidden health danger of London's outdoor swimming spots
E. coli levels at London 's Hyde Park Serpentine Lido surged by 1,188.8 per cent between 2023 and 2024, raising concerns about the safety of wild swimming.
Hampstead Heath Mixed Ponds also saw a 230 per cent increase in E.coli during the same period, which can cause life-threatening infections and severe food poisoning.
Despite the increase, the Serpentine Lido received a 'sufficient' rating from the Environment Agency, meeting minimum standards for bathing water.
Experts advocate for more comprehensive water testing, including viruses, to ensure public safety.
The increased popularity of wild swimming since the pandemic has highlighted concerns about water quality and the need for stricter monitoring.
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Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
‘My daughter only knew hospitals until I had a son whose bone marrow saved her life'
'I've been thinking a lot about health privilege lately,' says Mina Holland, 'and I absolutely don't take good health for granted any more.' We are sitting in the garden of her house in Tulse Hill, south London, not far from where she grew up. It's a poignant anniversary for Holland. Six years ago today, her life changed forever when a routine check-up at Lewisham hospital turned into an emergency. Her 11-week-old daughter, Vida, was admitted for an urgent blood transfusion. 'I've never seen a baby with haemoglobin levels this low,' one doctor said. Holland is an author, journalist and occasional restaurant and wine list consultant, as evidenced by her large open kitchen, with its amply stocked wine rack and a pyramid of Mutti Polpa – the connoisseur's tinned tomatoes – by the back door. She has just baked some deliciously sticky cookies, which we take into the garden to eat. Her husband Freddie, a sound engineer, is at work; Vida and her four-year-old brother Gabriel are at school. Before that hospital trip in 2019, looking after Vida had been a struggle. Despite her frequent crying and pallor – people complimented her porcelain skin – the couple had no real idea anything was wrong. She wasn't an easy baby: a fussy feeder and an erratic sleeper. But they were first-time parents – what did they know? When they were first told about Vida's haemoglobin levels, they assumed it meant she was severely anaemic. But it soon became clear that it was more serious than that. Vida received a blood transfusion over four days – there's only so much you can give at once – and after just one instalment, the change was remarkable: her colour returned and she fed with gusto. The family took her home and tests began to investigate the cause of her anaemia, which could have stemmed from a number of things. They were vastly relieved to learn it wasn't blood cancer – but unsettled by the emerging discussions around 'bone marrow'. The effects of the transfusion soon wore off. Four weeks later, Vida's haemoglobin levels had dropped again, and her symptoms – poor appetite, restlessness, pallor – had returned. Holland was floored, watching her baby decline. But as a journalist, she threw herself into the research, typing in symptoms and exploring every possible avenue in search of a cause. She was becoming desperate. One condition Holland came across was extremely rare – but it seemed to match all of Vida's symptoms: Diamond-Blackfan anaemia (DBA), a genetic blood disorder in which the bone marrow fails to produce enough red blood cells. DBA affects only five to seven children in a million. But that's what it turned out to be, as the family discovered on a bleak day in July, when Vida was five months old. Neither Holland nor Freddie carry the gene for DBA, they would later learn, and the odds of Vida having it were infinitesimal. It felt like a life sentence of anxiety and grief. As well as an inability to produce sufficient red blood cells, DBA is associated with a predisposition to certain cancers and the risk of other abnormalities. Treatment pathways vary – a lifelong course of steroids or a bone marrow transplant were possibilities for the future – but in the short term, it meant regular blood transfusions, roughly every three weeks. Each time, a cannula had to be inserted into the arm of a screaming baby – often requiring both parents and three nurses – followed by a painstaking effort to keep her still for the next three hours. Holland has now written a book about these early years, called Lifeblood, which gives a visceral impression of the emotions they went through at the time; firstly the worry and uncertainty, followed by incomprehension, then the fear and grief at what they – and Vida – were facing for the rest of their lives. 'I'm really lucky in that we had a very favourable set-up,' she says today. 'Our parents are around, my mother-in-law is a psychotherapist, we've got access to all the top-notch children's hospitals. But I still just felt very, very alone.' Friends did their best, but she came to resent their platitudes. 'I can't tell you what would have helped – I think I just needed to be met in the despair, at that point.' There were endless hospital visits and life gradually reshaped itself around this new reality – DBA was all Holland could talk about. She couldn't work. She couldn't even watch TV. Every aspect of their lives was dictated by Vida's condition. They sold their flat – it felt like 'a crime scene', she writes – and moved in with Louise, Freddie's mother, whose home was near St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, where Vida was being treated, as well as the Evelina Children's Hospital at St Thomas's, south London. Vida was doing well on the transfusions – Freddie described her as 'full of life, but not haemoglobin' – but difficult questions loomed about the future. Around the age of one, she would become eligible for a steroid treatment: prednisolone, given initially at a high dose to jolt the bone marrow into producing red blood cells, then gradually tapered down in the hope it would continue to work at a sustainably low dose. This could mean an end to transfusions – but long-term, low-dose steroids are only effective in a minority of cases. The alternative was lifelong transfusions, which would not only severely limit her mobility but also require further treatment to manage the iron overload they cause. There was a third possibility: the bone marrow transplant. 'The idea of a bone marrow transplant just sounded wild,' says Holland now. 'Before this, bone marrow was a dish at the restaurant St John. Or something that I remember the dogs gnawing on at my grandmother's house. It just sounded so technical and so terrifying. And the idea of the complete destruction of the immune system in order to make your child independent of three-weekly hospital visits, was mind-boggling.' In a bone marrow transplant, the faulty marrow is replaced with healthy marrow from a matched donor, offering the possibility of a haematological cure. Graft-versus-host rejection can occur, though the risk is significantly lower if the donor is a family member, especially a sibling. (It is extremely rare for parents to be a match, and neither Holland nor Freddie were suitable donors.) Preparation for the transplant involves complete isolation and a course of chemotherapy and other drugs designed to destroy the immune system. Before Vida's DBA was even confirmed, Holland was convinced that transplant was her best option. 'I don't want illness to be her life's focus,' she writes. 'I wanted her to have all the freedom of movement and mind that healthy children and adults have.' In early 2020, Holland found out she was pregnant again. She and Freddie had wanted a second child anyway, 'and I really am keen to emphasise that he was never designed to be a saviour sibling', she says. The chances of that child being a match for Vida were one in four, and initially Holland had considered IVF to try to engineer this. 'But it was going to cost so much money, and the chances of it working were tiny. So we thought, well – one in four, let's try. We wanted another child, and if there was any way they could help, brilliant. 'Our second child will not be a 'designer baby',' Holland writes. 'Our child will be a much-loved family member who happens to have a trait that could help their sister in a way no one else could. We want to give Vida the best chance we can.' Gabriel was born in the winter of 2020, and in January 2021 they received the phone call – Gabriel did not have DBA. The relief was immense. 'A geneticist would say that because we already had a child with it, yes, the chances were higher, but actually based on probability it was a very low chance that he would have it as well. But obviously we were still scared.' A month later she and Freddie were informed that, should a transplant be warranted, Gabriel was a match for Vida. They were cautiously euphoric. 'When we found out that he was a match, it became a bit of a no-brainer. It was a big decision to go ahead with the transplant, because it's high-risk, but around that time the advice was changing: when she was diagnosed as a tiny baby, what we were hearing from the other parents in the DBA community and from her doctor, was this is not a decision you take lightly – it's dangerous, it's a year out of mainstream life, and there are a lot of things that could go wrong. Two years later, new research showed much better outcomes, both from donors who are related and not, and that the quality of life outcomes for kids who had had transplants were quite favourable compared to living on blood transfusions. 'I feel apprehensive about saying this because I know that there are lots of parents with children who are on transfusions, who are leading rich lives, but I know it's not easy.' In March 2023, Vida had her transplant, with bone marrow donated by her brother. Their parents did not underestimate the emotional implications of this. 'We have told Vida that Gabriel is 'sharing some of his blood with her',' Holland writes in Lifeblood. 'She is concerned about him 'going to sleep'; having his blood removed; we tell her that he has lots of it and that he won't remember […] Until now, Freddie and I have minimised the significance of what he will have to endure – the many blood tests, the general anaesthetic, the soreness in his lower back where the bone marrow will be taken, and the consequent anaemia which will require months of iron supplementation […] we are signing up our baby for the possibility of pain and distress. This doesn't sit comfortably.' In anticipation of the transplant, Vida had spent weeks in hospital, and had a Hickman line fitted through which to administer her 'conditioning treatment' – a cocktail of meds, including the chemotherapy, which inevitably made her ill, and caused her to lose her hair. But the transplant was a success. Gabriel's stem cell donation was 'abundant', her doctor informed them, and the new cells established successfully. She remained in hospital for five-and-a-half weeks as her immune system was non-existent, whereas Gabriel was sent home the following day and made a very quick recovery. When Vida returned home, there were restrictions. She had to take nine different medications four times a day; she had a controlled diet and could only drink boiled water. 'Every aspect of her day is monitored, curated, limited somehow,' writes Holland. Vida is six now, and flourishing. She started school midway through her reception year and is doing well, though she still has many hospital appointments. DBA makes her susceptible to certain cancers, so she has to be careful with sun protection, and she'll be on penicillin for life. Gabriel is sometimes jealous of these precautions and asks for medicine too. 'She's the patient, and it's obviously been hardest for her, but it's also been tough on Gabriel – in different ways. After the transplant, she often had to be readmitted, and we'd have to leave at a moment's notice to go to A&E at St Mary's. That was really hard for him; he was only three.' Vida hasn't questioned the constant hospital visits, Holland says. It's all she knows. 'I spent so long grieving that she was not going to have a normal life, that we were missing out on all the school activities and the swimming lessons – I was so worried about all that, but there have been aspects of it that have been quite wonderful, and I don't say that lightly.' Remarkably, Holland says, 'Vida loves going to hospital now. She used to get very frightened about the blood tests, it was traumatic for her and for us, but when I look at it as a whole, hospital has been a place where she gets focused time with one or both of her parents, she gets a lot of adult attention, she gets art therapy, she gets music therapy, she gets lots of presents. There have been rich moments too as well as very long, very empty, uncertain and frightening days. 'I think that how Vida's trauma is expressed will obviously evolve over time, and I feel I need to be quite alert as to how things could come out for her as she gets older.' At Easter, Vida's school put on an 'Eggstravaganza' where all the children were asked to make a diorama featuring hard-boiled eggs. 'I said, we've got to win this – let's make the hospital.' So they created 'Egg-elina Children's Hospital', based on the Evelina, with yolk transfusions and an 'eggs-ray'. And Vida won. The idea of the book came up while Holland was pregnant with Gabriel. 'I wrote it in a very sort of stolen-moments way, over about four years. The original plan was for it to be about Vida's first year, and finding acceptance, accommodating the unexpected. When things feel really bleak, it's hard to see how any good can come of them, but I know a lot of good has come from what happened. 'Even with the transfusions, I am glad those days are over but I look back on them fondly because I felt so held – particularly in the early days when I was always trying to second guess how she was doing, what her blood count was; I was always gazing at her face and ears and lips, trying to work out how anaemic she was. But when she went into hospital, I was sharing the responsibility. Obviously I wish that Vida hadn't had to go through what she has, and we could have been spared it – but it's sort of all I know now. I've been rewired.' In the UK, one in 25 babies is born with a genetic condition of some kind, and Holland's book will resonate with other parents facing similar challenges. Writing down what happened really helped, she says, 'and having a sense of – it sounds like a cliché – but being able to take control of the story. It was good to put it in my own words; I often don't know how I feel about things until I've written them down.' She is full of gratitude for the NHS. 'The biggest takeaway is just how hugely lucky we are to have the NHS, and what a precious thing it is. It's been incredible. I would love to know what Vida's medical bill is after six years of this; even the chelation medicine she had to have while she was on transfusion was well into five figures a year.' What people can do to help, she says, is give blood. Her book is out, inadvertently, just after World Blood Donor Day, which is on 14 June. 'For an hour spent in a blood donor centre you can save up to three lives. And in order to maintain blood supplies, 140,000 first-time donors are needed every year. 'I would just like to convey that it is an easy thing to do – having watched countless needles go into Vida, I've probably become hardened to it – and it has profound benefits for society.' How does she feel about Vida reading about herself in Lifeblood in the future? 'I feel quite guilty about the fact that for her first year I was just so sad, and I've been worried about what she might experience reading that. But I like to think that what comes across is extreme love.'
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE EXPOSED: How restaurants are lying to you about their hygiene ratings. STEVE BOGGAN'S investigation reveals the shocking truth about those green stickers - and exactly what the owners had to say when confronted
Are you from food hygiene? It was an odd question to be asked, but 46-year-old restaurateur Sameh Houeidi seemed anxious to know. I was looking at the official hygiene rating sticker on the window of his Lebanese restaurant near Aldgate in London.
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Trans people have been lied to on legal rights, says equalities chief
Transgender people must accept a 'period of correction' over their rights after the Supreme Court ruling on gender because they have been 'lied to' about their legal status for years, an equalities chief says. Akua Reindorf, who is drafting guidance on how to treat trans people following April's ruling on the definition of a woman, added that the blame lay with their lobbyists. Ms Reindorf, a barrister and one of eight commissioners on the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), made her remarks in a personal capacity during a debate hosted by the London School of Economics. She said: 'Unfortunately, young people and trans people have been lied to over many years about what their rights are.' The EHRC has been given the task of developing new guidelines on transgender people for public buildings such as cafes, schools and hospitals, after the Supreme Court ruled transgender women are not legally women. Shortly after the ruling the EHRC released interim guidance advising: 'Trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women's facilities.' Ms Reindorf's words came as the NHS Confederation, which represents hospital trusts, scrapped its old guidance allowing transgender patients to use the toilets of the sex they identify with. A spokesman for the NHS Confederation said their old guidance is now 'dated' and requires updating to align with the Supreme Court ruling. The two developments will be seen as a major blow to transgender activists, who have been petitioning for public organisations such as the NHS to ignore the court's decision. The Girl Guides and Refuge, the largest domestic abuse charity for women, have both said they have no intention in changing their policy on allowing trans women to use their female facilities. Ms Reindorf described their approach as ridiculous, arguing it amounted to a 'huge farce'. She said transgender people 'have been lied to and there has to be a period of correction'. She added: 'The fact is that, until now, trans people without Gender Recognition Certificates, were being grievously misled about their legal rights. 'The correction of self-ID policies and practices will inevitably feel like a loss of rights for trans people. 'This unfortunate position is overwhelmingly a product of the misinformation which was systematically disseminated over a long period by lobby groups and activists.'
