SAN DIEGO — Sewage pollution spilling over the border from Tijuana into the San Diego region not only threatens the health of surfers and swimmers but potentially those simply breathing the air.
That's according to a study from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography published Thursday in the journal Environmental Sciences & Technology, which found sewage-linked bacteria in sea-spray aerosols at Imperial Beach.
"Once pollutants become airborne that just means so many more people can be exposed to those pollutants," said Kim Prather, principal investigator on the study and director of the Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment at Scripps. "It extends well beyond just people going to the beach or getting in the water."
