24 Sewage Contaminations Detected In Malta Since Start of May
Malta recorded 24 sewage contaminations since May of this year, Health Minister Jo-Etienne Abela confirmed in a response to a Parliamentary Question.
In light of Malta’s recent news of E. coli contaminations, which was somewhat expected as summer began approaching, PN MP Rebekah Borg inquired into how the sea is tested, how many tests have been done, and how many contaminations have been recorded each year, starting from 2016 up until 2nd June – the day the PQ was submitted.
Samples are collected from all 87 official bathing sites around Malta, Gozo, and Comino two weeks before the official swimming season begins. The season starts from the third week of May to the third week of October, and samples are continuously collected throughout in order to monitor them.
Abela provided the amount of tests done each year for the past seven years, as well as detected contaminations.
It turns out that this year, there have been a whopping 24 contaminations in just one month, quite a high number considering that last year, there were 60 registered contaminations out of 2,221 tests done throughout the whole swimming season – that’s 2.7%.
Meanwhile, this year, 5.1% of 461 samples were found to have been contaminated by drainage.
Are you concerned by these numbers?
READ NEXT: Over €67,000 Of ERA Fines Issued To Government Agencies Still Need To Be Paid
