Outside of an incoming hurricane, few threats discourage Texans from plunging into the Gulf of Mexico more than the dangerous fecal contamination frequently reported along our coastline. Last year a widely publicized study from Environment America, an advocacy group that focuses on pollution, revealed that 90 percent of Texas beaches exposed swimmers to at least one day of potentially unsafe fecal contamination—well above the national average of 55 percent. Does that mean you should burn your swim trunks and cancel vacation plans? Thankfully, no. Outdated testing methods, for starters, can yield unreliable results. They may fail to detect when unsafe levels of pollution are present, but they may also create an outsized sense of danger. The waters consistently deemed potentially unsafe are still a relatively small…
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