After 16 years of research federal officials are set to release sometime this month new standards for deciding if a beach is safe for people to have fun.

The current standard was set in 1996, updated from an initial standard set in the 1980s by the United State Environmental Protection Agency, said Joan Rose, director of the Water Quality, Environmental and Molecular Microbiology Laboratory at Michigan State University.

“They do need a new criteria,” Rose said

Originally researchers interviewed people several days after they went swimming to find out how many got sick. They used that information to judge if a beach was safe. If eight people out of 1,000 got sick, water quality was defined as unacceptable for recreation.

There are serious problems with that method, Rose said.

more: Federal officials weigh new beach health standard | Great Lakes Echo.