The challenges of „clean and safe” swimming spaces

This paper explores the tensions between outdoor swimmers’ desire for immersive experiences in nature and the growing emphasis on maintaining “clean and safe” swimming environments in polluted and ecologically complex waters. The study is important because outdoor swimming is increasingly promoted as beneficial for health and wellbeing, yet access to “safe” and “clean” water is shaped by social inequalities, environmental degradation, and conflicting expectations about nature.

The paper critically examines how ideas of purity, cleanliness, and safety influence outdoor swimming cultures and environmental ethics, through collaborative ethnographic fieldwork at several outdoor swimming locations in Wales. The analysis focused particularly on a Cardiff reservoir that temporarily banned swimming due to swimmer’s itch caused by naturally occurring organisms in the water.

The study found that outdoor swimming is inherently shaped by “polluted leisure,” where swimmers must navigate unavoidable encounters with dirt, bacteria, wildlife, algae, sewage, and ecological uncertainty. The authors argue that attempts to create “clean and safe” swimming environments often produce new forms of exclusion, regulation, and social control while overlooking the ecological realities of outdoor water spaces.

Outdoor swimming management should move away from unrealistic ideals of purity and instead embrace more ethical and ecologically aware approaches that recognize human and non-human interdependence in shared water environments.

CITE: Moles, K., & Olive, R. (2025). ‘Clean and safe’?: Swimming ethically in compromised times and polluted places. Health & Place, 93, 103457. DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2025.103457