Watch out for that weed

SHOULD you be heading off to Brittany on holiday this summer then stay well away from the beaches that are polluted with green algae. Because it has now been officially accepted that the stuff can kill you.

- Anna Lythgoe

The green tides have become all too frequently manifest in recent years, particularly around the mouths of rivers which have carried increasing amounts of agricultural run-off down to the sea.

The waterways have become grossly polluted by nitrates from both fertilisers and animal waste, giving rise to huge tonnages of algae appearing to cover many of the golden beaches which used to be such a selling point for the tourism sector.

To a point, even, where local authorities have been obliged to temporarily close some of them because of the lethal amounts of hydrogen sulphide the algal blooms give off as they decompose.

Alas, their intervention has not been enough to save lives, with at least two human deaths now attributed to the toxic fumes. The first was a contractor who was called in to clear a heavily polluted beach in 2009 but the case of the second, 50-year-old jogger Jean-René Auffray, was at the centre of a landmark ruling in a French appeal court last week.

He died in 2016 from rapid pulmonary oedema after inhaling high concentrations of the gas while out running and the hearing, in Nantes, held the French government partly responsible for his death because it had failed to implement European and national regulations designed to protect waters from agricultural pollution.