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A holiday in Wales took a dangerous turn for Ian Gowan, a visitor from Kidderminster, who ended up in a high dependency hospital unit after a seemingly minor fall into the sea at Aberystwyth led to a severe lung infection. While walking his dog along the seafront, Gowan lost his balance and fell, inhaling several mouthfuls of seawater before a passerby helped him to his feet. “Someone walking past helped me but I’d ingested about four mouthfuls of water into my lungs,” he recalled. Initially, Gowan thought little of the incident and continued his vacation, but within two weeks, he developed a chest infection. Despite multiple courses of antibiotics prescribed by his GP, his symptoms persisted. After the fifth visit, his doctor detected an abnormality in his left lung, prompting an urgent X-ray that revealed a soft mass the size of a tennis ball, later identified as an abscess filled with pus. “I thought it was going to be cancer – thank goodness it wasn’t,” Gowan said. The infection escalated to sepsis, requiring immediate admission to the high dependency unit at Worcester Royal Infirmary, where he received intravenous antibiotics for five days. Upon discharge, his wife continued administering IV antibiotics at home for ten days, followed by a month of oral medication. Although the abscess eventually resolved, Gowan was left with permanent lung scarring and reduced breathing capacity. “It’s bad for me because I used to play in a brass band, and I played the tuba, but I can’t push the air through any more, so I had to stop that. And I lost four weeks wages because I wasn’t paid,” he explained. His consultant attributed the infection to bacteria in the Aberystwyth seawater, stating, “something has got into your lungs to cause this and the only thing it could have been was the sea water in Aberystwyth.”
Gowan’s ordeal comes as Surfers Against Sewage releases a report highlighting Wales as having the most acute sewage pollution problem in the UK. According to Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, the company operates over 2,300 storm overflows in Wales, a high number for its relatively small population, and rural communities often rely on smaller sewerage systems that are vulnerable to overflow during heavy rainfall. In 2024, Dŵr Cymru discharged sewage into Welsh waters 118,276 times, totaling 968,340 hours, the highest number of confirmed discharges by any UK water company. The company’s target to reduce sewage discharges to 30 incidents per combined sewer overflow by 2030 has been criticized by campaigners as “lacking ambition,” especially when compared to the UK average target of 21. Surfers Against Sewage described the target as “truly unacceptable,” warning that “Dŵr Cymru is constantly playing catch-up, with water users in Wales likely remaining at higher risk than those of other regions, up to 2030 and beyond,” and accused regulators of failing to hold the company accountable.
A Dŵr Cymru spokeswoman responded, “Both England and Wales are working to tackle issues surrounding storm overflows, with a slightly different focus. Wales is focused on tackling storm overflows that cause the most environmental harm first. In England, the focus is on reducing the numbers of spills. We operate over 2,300 storm overflows in Wales as we have a very high number of assets for a relatively small population. Many of our rural communities are served by smaller sewerage networks and storm overflows, which are essential to ensure networks do not become overwhelmed and flood properties. A spill from a very small rural overflow in Wales counts the same as a huge