I’ve studied England’s water pollution crisis as a sociologist for three years – and I have an unpopular opinion
Caitlin Bunce, an ESRC-funded doctoral researcher in Sociology and Social Policy, reflects on three years of research into England’s water pollution crisis and challenges some of the assumptions that shape how we think, talk, and act on the issue.
Beyond the daily excitement of sending emails, scheduling interviews and finding the page number from "that quote I forgot to source", the task I dread most in my PhD is trying to explain my research to someone down the pub.
This usually goes one of two ways. Either I say, “I’m doing a PhD in sociology,” and watch their eyes glaze over politely; or I say, “I study water pollution,” and trigger a passionate rant about sewage, water companies (“have you seen ?!”) and why something must be done. After a while, I learned to keep things vague.
When I started my PhD in 2023, I would have joined in these enthused rantings. I chose my topic - a sociological look at England’s water pollution - because I, like many others, became acutely aware of the state of our rivers during the pandemic. During my mandated one-hour, once-daily walks, I saw my local waterways differently. A plastic bottle meandered its way through a small stream. An oil slick gathered along a muddy bank. The summer drought had drained the village pond to a puddle, much to the displeasure of the ducks. I felt a clear sense of injustice, a call to arms (research), and the comforting belief that if enough people cared, the problem could be fixed.
Three years later, and after hundreds of inquiry documents, dozens of interviews with activists, scientists and regulators, and more time chasing up Freedom of Information requests than I’d like to admit, I’ve come away with more questions than I started with. And that’s where my unpopular opinion begins.
Into murkier waters
It’s not that water pollution in England isn’t serious. It is. Our most comprehensive data suggests every river fails to meet required chemical standards, and only 15% are in good ecological health. Combined with the effects of climate change and increased demands on water supply, the risks to the health of our waters will continue to rightfully dominate headlines.
But what has surprised me most is how difficult pollution is to define, identify, and act on. Public debates tend to frame water pollution as something obvious: visibly disgusting, socially unacceptable, and with someone clearly to blame. That framing works. It captures attention, sparks outrage, and makes complex environmental harm feel immediate and morally urgent. In sociological terms, it’s a very successful way to turn water pollution into a public problem.
Over time, my research exposed me to how much this clarity conceals. Much of the pollution that causes long-term harm to rivers is invisible, cumulative, and slow. Nutrients build up for decades. Chemicals circulate through ecosystems in ways science still struggles to trace. Monitoring technologies reveal some problems while obscuring others. What counts as “pollution” in public debate is often what can be seen, smelled, photographed, or turned into a shocking number - not necessarily what does the most ecological damage.
Speaking to the ‘proper’ scientists (ecologists, hydrologists, environmental chemists, and so on), I was struck by a quiet unease about current public discourse: that, as one scientist said, the problem of water pollution has ‘become one, very substantially, of perception over evidence’.
My unpopular opinion isn’t that the public shouldn’t be concerned about water pollution. It’s that our most powerful ways of talking about pollution - focusing on what’s visible, disgusting, and blameworthy - risks overlooking what isn’t. We don’t talk enough about road runoff, about what we flush down our toilets, or whether we need to reconsider how much value we currently place on water.
The hardest thing to unlearn during this PhD wasn’t caring less about rivers. It was letting go of the belief that pollution is a problem with clean boundaries and straightforward solutions.
Why the messiness might be the point
The hardest thing to unlearn during this PhD wasn’t caring less about rivers. It was letting go of the belief that pollution is a problem with clean boundaries and straightforward solutions. My research didn’t give me answers so much as it took away a comforting illusion: that environmental harm is always obvious, exceptional, and someone else’s fault.
Which is a difficult thing to say down the pub. I understand why. Simple problems and solutions make the big issues feel emotionally manageable. But working on this research has made it harder for me to share in that comfort.
Sitting in this discomfort has, ironically, been one of the most valuable parts of the research. Sociology refuses to offer neat solutions to problems - instead, it raises uncomfortable questions.
If there is a call to action here, it isn’t to direct outrage elsewhere, or to care less about polluted rivers. Maybe it’s to become more curious about the stories we tell, more willing to sit with explanations that don’t have easy solutions, and open to the less satisfying possibility that some problems might never really go away. Alternatively, if you want something you can do in an afternoon, look up the toxic horrors of ‘sewage cake’.
I still care deeply about England’s waterways. But my research has taught me that caring sometimes means asking harder questions. Sociology has an enduring stubbornness in its refusal to take the obvious at face value, and a quiet way of unsettling the certainties we didn’t realise we were relying on.
And if that makes me slightly worse company in the pub, I think it’s probably worth it, in the end.
I still care deeply about England’s waterways. But my research has taught me that caring sometimes means asking harder questions. Sociology has an enduring stubbornness in its refusal to take the obvious at face value.