WELCOME

Welcome to the Thames Recreational Users study, a study to investigate the risks to health posed by exposure to polluted river water.

The project seeks to address the current major deficiency in knowledge about the safety of recreational estuarine river water in England and Wales, through the recruitment and study of a population of recreational users of the river Thames at a suitable location on the Thames tideway. The study aims to determine the magnitude of any increased risk of ill health correlated to contact with river water, and to correlate ill health events within the population to a robust regime of water quality measurements.

The Thames is said to be the cleanest urban river in Europe and a resource much appreciated by rowers, sailors and canoeists and kayakers across London and the South East. However, there is still a potential for contamination with sewage from combined sewage and storm water overflows in times of heavy rainfall, as well as some run-off from agricultural land in the Thames valley. There are no data in existence to show whether these levels of contamination pose any threat to the health of recreational users of the Thames in London.

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