Can you bring your dog to the beach? It depends on where you are going.
Some beaches with designated bathing areas restrict dog access, especially during the summer bathing season, which is running now and until September 15th.
This isn’t because the council doesn’t like your dog. The restrictions are there to reduce the nuisance risk of dogs being let off the leash and allowed to run free – especially when children are around. There’s also the public health risk from the potential for dog fouling.
You see, dog poo contains a lot of dangerous pathogens that can pose a significant threat to public health when it’s not picked up by pet owners, says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
This threat is particularly high on beaches where people are more likely to come into direct contact with dog faeces through beach activities and swimming.
It’s the EPA’s job to keep us safe by monitoring water quality in designated bathing areas.
Poo pollution in bathing water can come from a number of sources, such as sewage, but it definitely comes from dogs too, research tells us. And it turns out a little dog poo can go a long way to making you sick.
There are actually enough E.coli bacteria in one dog poo to contaminate an Olympic-size swimming pool – that’s around three million litres of water – to a level that would fail to meet the “excellent” water quality standard, says the EPA.
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Indeed, a single gram of dog poo can contain up to 23 million faecal coliform bacteria. Dog waste can also spread parasites such as hookworms, whipworms, roundworms, ringworms, tapeworms, parvovirus and salmonella.
That’s not a fun day at the beach for anyone.
Most dog owners are responsible, keeping their dogs on leads, monitoring them closely in case of fouling, and bagging and disposing of poo in the right bin.
But despite fines of €150, it’s not uncommon to see dog poo buried in the sand or hidden under stones, according to the EPA’s beach guide, beaches.ie.
Maybe pet owners think it will eventually just “go away”, or be washed out by the sea, and that will be fine?
We can thank Acclimatize, a project by UCD researchers in 2021, for really taking a deep dive into matter. They looked at the effect of dog poo on seaside bathing waters and how that can impact public health.
The team first tried to estimate the levels of E.coli and intestinal enterococci [bacteria] in the poo of dogs, by collecting faecal samples from dog shelters in Leinster.
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There are almost three billion colony-forming units, or live bacteria, for E.coli, and 350 million of them for intestinal enterococci in just one dog poo, their research found.
The Acclimatize team then set out to estimate the impact of dog fouling on bathing water quality in Sandymount Strand and Merrion Strand in Dublin, and Donabate and Portrane beaches in north Co Dublin.
They carried out dog fouling surveys on each beach first to estimate the average amount of dog poo being left behind in a day.
Dog fouling at Sandymount, Merrion, Portrane and Donabate can greatly contribute to failing bathing water quality in Dublin Bay, they concluded.
Their analysis of bathing water samples showed direct evidence that dog fouling can elevate fecal levels above the “failure” threshold under the EU bathing water directive criteria.
Just one dog poo has the potential to fail an area of water 0.5m deep and approximately the size of a tennis court.
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More needs to be done to reduce dog fouling on beaches, Acclimatize concluded. This means more bins, more dog wardens and more education and awareness among dog owners of their responsibility to more closely monitor their dogs and pick up after them.
Dog business has no business at the beach, says the EPA.
You can check if the beach you are visiting allows dogs by visiting beaches.ie. It has up-to-date water quality measurements of your favourite beaches there too.
The message to dog owners is clear: clean up after your pet for your health and that of other beach users.
