Water Safety
Bath was charged with responsibility for the hot springs in a Royal Charter of 1591 granted by Elizabeth I. This duty has now passed to Bath and North East Somerset Council, who carry out monitoring of pressure, temperature and flow rates. The thermal waters contain sodium, calcium, chloride and sulphate ions in high concentrations.
The water that flows through the Roman Baths is considered unsafe for bathing, partly due to its having passed through the still-functioning original lead pipes, and up until World War II, it was advertised on the basis of the radioactivity it contained. However the more significant danger is now considered to be infectious diseases. In 1979 a girl swimming in the restored bath swallowed some of the source water, and died five days later from amoebic meningitis. Tests showed that a species of amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, was in the water and the pool was closed, and remains closed today. The newly-constructed Thermae Bath Spa nearby, designed by Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners, and the refurbished Cross Bath allow modern-day bathers to experience the waters via a series of more recently-drilled boreholes.
Read more about this topic: Roman Baths (Bath)
Famous quotes containing the words water and/or safety:
“He said he couldn’t make the boy believe
He could find water with a hazel prong—
Which showed how much good school had ever done him.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace between our parents’ safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)