California beaches sicken 1.5 million a year

As many as 1.5 million people are sickened by bacterial pollution on Southern California beaches each year, resulting in millions of dollars in public health care costs, a new study has found. The study prepared by researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles and Stanford University is believed to be the first to examine illnesses at a large swath of the nation's most popular beaches. Previous studies have linked health problems to contamination at individual beaches.