Insight

Londoners warned about taking a dip in the Thames

Our research for Tideway, the company building the Thames Tideway Tunnel under London to help clean it up, has revealed that 55% of people who live in London think the river, or at least parts of it, is safe enough to swim in.

The survey also found that 45% would be likely to take a dip in the river to cool off in the event of a heatwave. A fifth of the 1,000 people surveyed said they would rather swim in the Thames than a public pool because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Most of those who participated in the survey (81%) “grossly underestimated” the amount of sewage that enters the river each year, believing up to a million tonnes flow in. In reality, 39 million tonnes of sewage are still flowing into the Thames each year before work on the super sewer began.

Read more here.