If you were thinking about going to Rio for the Olympics next year, after reading the piece below, you might want to re-consider that. The Nation reports in "The Water in Rio Is Full of Sludge and Rotting Fish—And Olympians Are Supposed to Swim in It".....
"It is a cheap and easy metaphor, made no more sophisticated or amusing by the fact that it is true. The Rio 2016 Olympics are caked in all kinds of shit. There’s the bullshit of broken promises about the benefits that the Games would bring, and then there is the actual literal shit, long a reality in Rio and now visible to the world. The rivers, streams, and oceans are filled with floating feces, as the raw sewage of the city is, per custom, pumped directly into the water. Even the most pristine appearing of beaches are, in the words of an Associated Press report, “thick with putrid sludge.” And its Olympic lake, Rodrigo de Freitas, is “littered with rotting fish.”
This is an Olympic sized problem, as athletes who participate in water sports will carry, in the words of Kristina Mena, an expert in waterborne viruses, “an infection risk of 99 percent.” As of this writing not one of the many water venues has been deemed safe for swimming or boating with waterborne virus levels in the water amounting to 1.7 million times the level of what would be dangerous in Southern California. John Griffith, a marine biologist at the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project said to the AP. “It’s all the water from the toilets and the showers and whatever people put down their sinks, all mixed up, and it’s going out into the beach waters. Those kinds of things would be shut down immediately if found here.”
Austrian sailors who practiced briefly in the Rio waters left the experience with violent vomiting, fevers, diarrhea and IVs in their arms. And these are the sailors. Imagine those who compete in what is called “The Olympic Marathon,” a 10 kilometer race that means two hours in this water for competitors."
"It is a cheap and easy metaphor, made no more sophisticated or amusing by the fact that it is true. The Rio 2016 Olympics are caked in all kinds of shit. There’s the bullshit of broken promises about the benefits that the Games would bring, and then there is the actual literal shit, long a reality in Rio and now visible to the world. The rivers, streams, and oceans are filled with floating feces, as the raw sewage of the city is, per custom, pumped directly into the water. Even the most pristine appearing of beaches are, in the words of an Associated Press report, “thick with putrid sludge.” And its Olympic lake, Rodrigo de Freitas, is “littered with rotting fish.”
This is an Olympic sized problem, as athletes who participate in water sports will carry, in the words of Kristina Mena, an expert in waterborne viruses, “an infection risk of 99 percent.” As of this writing not one of the many water venues has been deemed safe for swimming or boating with waterborne virus levels in the water amounting to 1.7 million times the level of what would be dangerous in Southern California. John Griffith, a marine biologist at the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project said to the AP. “It’s all the water from the toilets and the showers and whatever people put down their sinks, all mixed up, and it’s going out into the beach waters. Those kinds of things would be shut down immediately if found here.”
Austrian sailors who practiced briefly in the Rio waters left the experience with violent vomiting, fevers, diarrhea and IVs in their arms. And these are the sailors. Imagine those who compete in what is called “The Olympic Marathon,” a 10 kilometer race that means two hours in this water for competitors."
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