Teacher forced to quit job after chronic condition linked to sewage pollution – as sickness reports nearly triple
A secondary school teacher was forced to stop working after developing an incurable ear condition he believes was caused by surfing in sewage-polluted water.
Reuben Santer told Sky News he has had “an awful nine months” after contracting Meniere’s disease, which has caused him to have severe dizzy spells and hearing loss.
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His case has been highlighted by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) who say reports to them of being sick after entering the water have nearly tripled in the last year.
Their concerns come as the chair of the water regulator Ofwat is to face a grilling from MPs om Monday on how water companies plan to invest in crumbling infrastructure that has led to sewage regularly being spilled in UK waterways.
SAS says that as well as being an environmental problem, the sewage scandal is increasingly a public health one too.
‘Traumatic experience’
Reuben’s problems started last November when the 33-year-old developed an infection in his middle ear after a surf at Saunton Beach in Devon.
“I had this really loud, intense ringing in one side the day after a surf,” he told Sky News.
“I thought I was having a haemorrhage; I had no idea what was going on. I went to the doctor and they said it was a middle ear infection likely caused by dirty water but it’s impossible to prove.”
Reuben Santer (L) has suffered from ear infections linked to sewage pollution
Reuben’s symptoms went away with antibiotics but he fell ill a month later after going back in the water for the first time. He only realised afterwards that a sewage pollution warning had been in place and a day later he was “throwing up, having intense rotational vertigo, I completely lost my balance”. It emerged he had labyrinthitis in his inner ear.
“You can normally recover from that but somehow it triggered Meniere’s disease which is the same symptoms but chronically. It doesn’t have a known cure.
“I’ve had a really awful nine months, the worst thing is I lost my job.
“Being a teacher is stressful, I could not handle being in a classroom and having unpredictable attacks of vertigo…when everything around you is spinning. It was pretty traumatic.
“I haven’t been going out on my own, I haven’t been driving when I was previously an independent person so that’s been pretty tough. I also have hearing loss in my left ear and roaring tinnitus and sound sensitivity.”
Reports of sickness up by nearly a third
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What caused Britain’s sewage crisis?
While the definite cause of Reuben’s condition is not provable, Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) is concerned about a rise in people getting sick from dirty water.
In its annual Water Quality Report released this week, the campaign group said between October 2022 and September 2023 1,924 people reported getting ill after entering the water – up from 720 the year previously.
Of those who visited a doctor, three out of four people said the doctor attributed their illness to exposure to sewage-polluted waters.
The illnesses caused an estimated five years worth of sick days and the majority of cases happened at bathing sites considered to be “excellent” quality, the SAS report said.
Surfer ‘horrified’ to contract parasite
Naomi Jenkin, 37, was ill for three weeks after she contracted the parasite cryptosporidium following a surf in Newquay in the spring.
“It’s something that you get from water that’s contaminated with sewage,” she said. “I was horrified.”
She said her symptoms included being “doubled up in pain and feeling nauseous”.
“I had to just stop work and basically take myself to bed. I had a really bad stomach upset, and it basically went on for three weeks in total, so it really affected my life quite a lot.
“It’s also knocked my confidence to go back into the water.”
Naomi Jenkin was ill for three weeks after contracting a parasite
In some cases, sicknesses caused by suspected sewage pollution have been so severe people had to be hospitalised.
Robbie Bowman fell ill a few hours after going for a swim with a scrape on his leg in Cardiff and was found by his son “lying on the floor, waving my arms about, not making any sense”.
In hospital he was diagnosed with the bacterial infection cellulitis and kept on intravenous antibiotics for a week as doctors feared he had sepsis.
He told Sky News that he spent most of August “with my leg up trying to encourage the healing of my skin and the blisters on the back of my calf” and his skin is still red. A possible cause was given as Golden Staph, which can be caused by swimming in dirty water.
“It has quite massively impacted me,” he said. “I don’t trust the water anymore. That for me is the biggest shame.”
General Election ‘tipping point for change’
Giles Bristow, the CEO of Surfers Against Sewage, said the rise in sickness reports could be due to more people being aware of the sewage scandal and linking their health issues to that.
But he said more people are using water for recreational activities at the same time as rampant sewage dumping so “it’s bound to be that more people are getting ill”.
While firms are allowed to discharge sewage overflow when there is too much rainfall, this is only meant to happen in exceptional circumstances – yet several investigations over the past few years have found it is regularly happening illegally.
The SAS’s report found that untreated sewage was discharged across waterways in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales more than 399,864 times – over 1,000 times a day.
Mr Bristow said the report “reveals the complacency and disregard of governments, water companies and regulators towards the health of rivers and coastlines in the UK – and by extension people’s health”.
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Huge sewage spill captured in cornwall
With a general election looming, he called on all parties to adopt the SAS’s End Sewage Pollution Manifesto – a five point plan that includes cracking down on the profits made by water companies and ensuing regulators have resources to enforce pollution laws.
“This is an absolutely key issue for the public and we’ve got a mandate for change like never before,” he said.
“You wouldn’t put up with a Victorian health system where you turn up to your doctors and they give you a leech. So why should we put up with turning up to use our rivers and sees and finding it’s a Victorian system that discharges pollution into our waterways?”
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Government admits sewage dumping ‘unacceptable’
A Defra spokesperson admitted the levels of sewage dumping in UK waterways is “unacceptable” but insisted action was being taken to address it.
They pointed to the Plan for Water which will see firms face unlimited fines for sewage dumping.
“This plan includes targets so strict they are leading to the largest infrastructure programme in water company history – £60bn over 25 years – which in turn will result in hundreds of thousands fewer sewage discharges,” the spokesperson said.
Industry body Water UK has said it is prepared to almost double that spending to pay for upgrades and cut sewage discharges.
However, there is anger at the suggestion to increase consumer bills to fund it – given the large bonuses and dividends made by water company bosses in recent years.
The issue looks set to become a key battleground when voters next go to the polls, especially in rural and coastal areas traditionally represented by Conservative MPs – but which the Lib Dems are looking to take.
Tim Farron, the Lib Dems’ environmental spokesperson, called the SAS report an “insult” to people “who want to swim in their local river or sea without getting sick”, and called on the Conservatives to “ban bonuses for water company bosses until this filthy practice is brought to an end”.
Labour’s shadow environment secretary Steve Reed said the water industry “is broken after 13 years of Tory government” and Labour “will give Ofwat the powers to ban the payment of bonuses to water bosses until they have cleared up their filth”.
Donald Trump has said he will sue the BBC for between $1bn and $5bn over the editing of his speech on Panorama.
The US president confirmed he would be taking legal action against the broadcaster while on Air Force One overnight on Saturday.
“We’ll sue them. We’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion (£792m) and five billion dollars (£3.79bn), probably sometime next week,” he told reporters.
“We have to do it, they’ve even admitted that they cheated. Not that they couldn’t have not done that. They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”
Mr Trump then told reporters he would discuss the matter with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer over the weekend, and claimed “the people of the UK are very angry about what happened… because it shows the BBC is fake news”.
The Daily Telegraph reported earlier this month that an internal memo raised concerns about the BBC’s editing of a speech made by Mr Trump on 6 January 2021, just before a mob rioted at the US Capitol building, on its flagship late-night news programme.
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BBC crisis: How did it happen?
The concerns regard clips spliced together from sections of the president’s speech to make it appear he told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them to “fight like hell” in the documentary Trump: A Second Chance?, which was broadcast by the BBC the week before last year’s US election.
Following a backlash, both BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness resigned from their roles.
‘No basis for defamation claim’
On Thursday, the broadcaster officially apologised to the president and added that it was an “error of judgement” and the programme will “not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms”.
A spokesperson said that “the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited,” but they also added that “we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim”.
Earlier this week, Mr Trump’s lawyers threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn unless it apologised, retracted the clip, and compensated him.
The US president said he would sue the broadcaster for between $1bn and $5bn. File pic: PA
Legal challenges
But legal experts have said that Mr Trump would face challenges taking the case to court in the UK or the US.
The deadline to bring the case to UK courts, where defamation damages rarely exceed £100,000 ($132,000), has already expired because the documentary aired in October 2024, which is more than one year.
Also because the documentary was not shown in the US, it would be hard to show that Americans thought less of the president because of a programme they could not watch.
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Sky’s Katie Spencer on what BBC bosses told staff on call over Trump row
Newsnight allegations
The BBC has said it was looking into fresh allegations, published in The Telegraph, that its Newsnight show also selectively edited footage of the same speech in a report broadcast in June 2022.
A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC holds itself to the highest editorial standards. This matter has been brought to our attention and we are now looking into it.”
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A man has been given a 13-month prison sentence for stealing Banksy’s famous Girl With Balloon print from a London gallery.
Larry Fraser, 49, of Beckton, east London, was sentenced on Friday after pleading guilty to one count of non-residential burglary at Kingston Crown Court on 9 October.
The print, one of the street artist‘s most famous, was stolen from a gallery in New Cavendish Street in London at around 11pm on 8 September last year.
The recovered artwork back in the gallery. Pic: Metropolitan Police
Fraser used a hammer to smash his way through a glass entrance door at the Grove Gallery before stealing the artwork, which was valued at £270,000.
He concealed his identity with a mask, hooded jacket and gloves, but the Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad was able to identify him and track him to a location streets away.
He was also caught on CCTV loading the artwork into a van before fleeing the scene.
A second man, 54-year-old James Love, was accused of being the getaway driver in the burglary, but cleared of stealing the print.
Larry Fraser. Pic: Metropolitan Police
Damage to the Grove Gallery after the theft. Pic: Metropolitan Police
Fraser was arrested at his home address on 10 September, within 48 hours of the burglary, and charged the next day.
Officers were able to recover the artwork after executing a warrant on the Isle of Dogs. It has now been returned to the gallery.
Fraser pleaded to the court that he was struggling with a historic drug debt and agreed to steal the work “under a degree of pressure and fear”.
He said he did not know what he would be stealing, nor its value, until the day of the offence.
Fraser was caught on CCTV taking the artwork away from the gallery. Pic: Metropolitan Police
Jeffrey Israel, defending, said Fraser lived with his mother as her principal carer, and had only managed to “break his cycle of drug addiction” after his last prison sentence.
He added that it “would take a bold advocate” to suggest that the value of the print had increased by the burglary, but insisted “that is probably the reality”.
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Judge Anne Brown was unmoved, however, and said the offence was “simply too serious” for a suspended sentence.
“This is a brazen and serious non-domestic burglary,” she said.
“Whilst you did not know the precise value of the print, you obviously understood it to be very valuable.”
She added: “Whilst I am sure there was a high degree of planning, this was not your plan.”
However, Fraser may be eligible for immediate release due to time spent on electronic curfew.
Detective Chief Inspector Scott Mather, who led the Met’s investigation, said: “Banksy’s Girl With Balloon is known across the world – and we reacted immediately to not just bring Fraser to justice but also reunite the artwork with the gallery.
“The speed at which this took place is a testament to the tireless work of the flying squad officers – in total it took just four days for normality to be restored.”
The 2004 artwork was part of a £1.5m collection of 13 Banksy pieces at the gallery.
Gallery manager, Lindor Mehmetaj, said it was “remarkable” for the piece to have been recovered after the theft.
The 29-year-old said: “I was completely, completely shocked, but in a very, very positive way when the Flying Squad showed me the actual artwork.
“It’s very hard to put into words, the weight that comes off your shoulders.”
UK
‘Incredibly dangerous’ sex offender Chao Xu jailed – as police say there could be hundreds more victims
An “incredibly dangerous” sex offender who drugged his victims and installed spy cameras around his home has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 14 years – as police appeal for hundreds more potential victims to come forward.
Warning: This article contains details of sexual offences
Chinese national Chao Xu, 33, has been described by police as “one of the most prolific offenders ever uncovered” by the Metropolitan Police.
Xu, who was a law postgraduate student at the University of Greenwich in London between 2015 and 2016, ran his own recruitment business and targeted victims at networking events at his home.
He invented his “Spring of Life” cocktail, a mix of alcohols and Chinese herbal medicines, to sedate guests, and planted spy cameras in items including air fresheners, sanitary packaging and speakers.
Chao Xu setting up his camera
Pic: Met Police:
Police found thousands of pictures and videos, with some showing unconscious or incapacitated victims in his flat in Greenwich, south-east London.
Xu, who is from China but is believed to have been living in the UK since 2013, also covertly filmed women on their daily commutes at stations such as London Bridge in so-called upskirting incidents.
He pleaded guilty to 24 sex offences between 2021 and 2025 at Woolwich Crown Court in August relating to six victims, with two charges relating to a seventh woman left to lie on file.
Xu admitted four counts of rape, eight counts of assault by penetration, four counts of sexual assault, four counts of voyeurism, two counts of administering a substance with intent and two counts of operating equipment beneath the clothing of another without consent (commonly known as upskirting).
Special drink
Pic: Met Police:
An air freshener with a hidden camera.
Pic: Met Police
An air freshener with a hidden camera
Pic: Met Police
‘Incredibly dangerous man’
His Honour Judge Christopher Grout described Xu as an “incredibly dangerous man” who “took great enjoyment” from his offending.
“Your behaviour was calculated and planned, evidenced by the covert recording systems you had set up in your flats and the fact you had incapacitated a number of your victims by drugging them.
“You betrayed the trust of a number of women who you befriended in the most appalling ways imaginable,” he added.
Speaker with hidden camera
Pic: Met Police:
Hidden camera in bottom left of women’s sanitary packaging
Pic: Met Police
Could be hundreds of victims
Another 11 alleged victims have since come forward but the Metropolitan Police believe there are hundreds more in the UK and China, with offences committed in workplaces, public spaces and overseas.
Acting Detective Superintendent Lewis Sanderson described Xu as one of the “most prolific” offenders the force has ever investigated, adding that his “crimes were calculated, sustained, and devastating”.
Speaking outside the court on Friday, he said: “Chao Xu was a prolific and predatory sexual offender who committed some of the most cowardly and abhorrent crimes imaginable. His actions caused deep and lasting harm.”
“The number of victims of sexual assault, voyeurism and upskirting is believed to be in the hundreds. This includes individuals filmed without consent in Xu’s flat at his workplace and in public spaces.
“That is why today I’m making a direct appeal. If you believe you may have been a victim of Chao Xu, or if you have any information that could assist our investigation, please come forward. You will be listened to. You will be believed and you will be supported.”
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Xu was ‘prolific’ sex offender
He said all of the sexual assault victims were Chinese women, aged between 18 and 30, while the voyeurism victims are also young females but of different ethnicities.
He added that there will be women who may not know they are victims of his crimes, as they may have been drugged by Xu.
Detectives were alerted to Xu’s crimes after he held a networking event in Greenwich in June.
Read more from Sky News:
Man admits to summer camp attacks
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When one of the women who attended became unwell, Xu offered to let her stay, before raping her several times, the Metropolitan Police said.
They later found he had drugged her with substances known to cause drowsiness and incapacitation.
The case included six million messages on WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app, most of them in Mandarin, which all had to be checked with the help of a translator.
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