A woman named Rachael Bell shares her harrowing experience of her two young sons falling ill with E.coli O157 and the subsequent death of her son Matthew. She also discusses the dangers of swimming in sewage-polluted waters and the need for stricter regulations.
Rachael Bell will never forget the day 30 years ago an environmental health officer visited her home in Morecambe Bay. Her two young sons, Matthew and Tom, were in bed, horribly sick with E.coli O157, the most dangerous strain of the pathogen.
Six other local children had fallen ill with it too. Was it an ‘outbreak’ or just a coincidence, a rare unrelated cluster? The health officer from Lancaster City Council was there to identify how Rachael’s sons may have been infected.
‘He was very formal, abrupt, carrying a briefcase,’ says Rachael, who is now 61 and still living in that same seaside cottage. E.coli O157 can be spread in many ways – including via human sewage, animal faeces, undercooked food and contaminated surfaces. The health officer had a list of questions about what her boys had eaten, where Rachael shopped and how she prepared food. He inspected her kitchen and the inside of her fridge.
Rachael had to demonstrate how she washed her hands.
‘He was asking about basic kitchen skills as if I was a bit simple,’ says Rachael, who now works as a cook and housekeeper. ‘I asked him, “Could it have come from the beach? ”’ This was the start of September, and they’d spent the summer in and around the sea. Just days before, they’d been on beaches in both Blackpool and Morecambe.
The health officer’s reply will stay with her forever.
‘E.coli can’t survive in water,’ he told her. When Rachael Bell asked an environmental health officer if her children’s E.coli could have come from the beach, he said no. Although Tom recovered – he is now 29, a musician – Matthew didn’t. The toxins produced by the E.coli led to a rare form of kidney failure, haemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).
On October 25 1997, a few weeks after that health officer’s visit, Matthew Bell died just shy of his fourth birthday.
‘For all these years, because of that health officer, I’ve believed it was because of something I’d done wrong,’ says Rachael. The other ill children recovered – although one needed dialysis – and the link between the cases was never explained. There was nothing that all the children had eaten, no shop or food outlet they had all used.
It was only this year, watching Dirty Business, the Channel 4 factual drama starring David Thewlis and Jason Watkins, that Rachael realised she hadn’t been told the truth. E.coli can survive in water – up to 91 days. And even in 1997, campaign groups such as Surfers Against Sewage were pointing to the danger of water company policy that saw raw sewage released straight into our waterways.
As the heatwave continues, with the half term holiday stretching ahead, hundreds of thousands of Brits will flock to the beach. But just how safe is the water? Last year, water companies dumped raw, untreated sewage into our rivers and seas more than 300,000 times. Data shows there have been 6,000 cases of illness, including stomach bugs, eye infections and E.coli, since 2019, linked to swimming in official UK bathing spots.
Early data on 2026 suggests the situation is escalating. According to Surfers Against Sewage, in the first 11 weeks of the year, water companies have already discharged more than half of 2025’s total. One hundred and seventy one locations have experienced pollution lasting longer than a week and in just three months, well before peak season, 164 people have reported illness after being in the water.
The beautiful golden sand at Blackpool North Beach might look inviting, but the environment agency currently advises against swimming there, with dangerous levels of E.coli found in the sea in 2025. (In 1997, before official monitoring of sewage spills began, Rachael’s boys swam from this very beach. ) Last year, not a single beach in the North West was awarded a blue flag for water quality and cleanliness. Viewers of Dirty Business will not be surprised by this.
The drama starred Thewlis and Watkins as real-life ‘sewage sleuths’ retired Detective Superintendent Ash Smith and university professor Peter Hammond, Cotswolds neighbours, who uncovered sewage dumps by water companies on an industrial scale. Weaved through the drama is the heartbreaking story of eight-year-old Heather Preen from Birmingham, who contracted E.coli O157 during a seaside holiday in Dawlish Warren, Devon. Like Matthew Bell, Heather died from HUS.
There had been six other primary cases of E.coli infection in Dawlish at the time – but again, no source was identified. For Rachael, watching the drama plunged her into shock.
‘I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,’ she says. ‘Heather died in 1999, two years after Matthew, and it was all exactly the same. I felt like I’d been had. ’ Rachael isn’t the only person who is looking at the most devastating time in her life with fresh eyes
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E.coli in our waterways: the truth about the danger lurking in our beachesRachael Bell's two young sons fell ill with E.coli O157 30 years ago, but the health officer's reply left her believing it was her fault. Now, she's shocked to learn the truth about the danger lurking in our beaches.
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