It is safe to swim in the waters of public beaches in Finland according to the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) recently published bathing water report. Most of Finnish bathing waters, about 92 per cent, were classified as being of excellent or good quality.
Eight beaches, or approximately three per cent, of Finland’s bathing waters were categorised in the lowest acceptable sufficient water quality’ class. The water quality of only two beaches (0.7%) was described as poor.
In Finland, an increasing number of bathing waters in lakes and rivers have been classified as excellent or good. These two top quality classes included 96 per cent of all inland beaches.
Approximately 80 per cent of the coastal bathing waters were classified as excellent or good. Coastal beaches are subject to stricter limits regarding the amounts of bacteria. This is because bacteria do not survive equally well in salt water, and therefore a smaller amount of bacteria is estimated to reflect the intestinal contamination of the water. However, the same limit values apply to all coastal bathing waters across Europe, so the amounts of bacteria in the low-salinity Baltic Sea and the high-salinity Mediterranean Sea are evaluated using the same criteria.
In Finland, the coastal bathing waters are not only low-salinity, but the shores are often shallow as well, which may weaken water circulation at the beach and affect the classification of bathing water quality, says Outi Zacheus, Senior Planning Officer at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare.
Basic data on individual beaches and bathing water classes based on monitoring are available on EEA’s online service. According to the information gathered in the service, Cyprus, Austria and Malta had the most beaches classified as excellent.
THL 2020 FINNISH INSTITUTE FOR HEALTH AND WELFARE