'Swimming in human crap': Athletes to face Rio's filthy waters
Athletes taking to the water at next month’s Olympic Games have been warned about the health implications of entering the city’s sewage-ridden waters.
Marathon swimmers, sailors and windsurfers competing at the games have been told by health experts that Rio’s waters are more contaminated than previously thought.
One doctor has warned that "athletes will literally be swimming in human crap".
The Brazilian government had previously promised to clean up Rio’s Guanabara Bay and the city’s ocean beaches, but officials acknowledge that their efforts to treat raw sewage and scoop up household garbage have fallen short.
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Tests by government and independent scientists revealed the horrors flowing through the city’s waters, including rotaviruses that can cause diarrhea and vomiting, plus “superbacteria” that can be fatal to people with weakened immune systems.
Researchers at the Federal University of Rio also found serious contamination at the famous beaches of Ipanema and Leblon, which many of the half a million Olympic spectators are expected to visit.
“Foreign athletes will literally be swimming in human crap, and they risk getting sick from all those microorganisms,” Dr Daniel Becker, a local pediatrician who works in poor neighborhoods, told The New York Times.
“It’s sad but also worrisome,” he added.
Afrodite Zegers, 24, a member of the Dutch sailing team, which has been practicing in Guanabara Bay, said: “We just have to keep our mouths closed when the water sprays up."
“It’s disgusting,” said Nigel Cochrane, a coach for the Spanish women’s sailing team. “We’re very concerned.”
Olympic officials concede that their efforts to clean up the waters ahead of the games have not addressed the fundamental problem that much of the sewage and trash produced by the region’s 12 million inhabitants continues to flow untreated into Rio’s waters.
“Our biggest plague, our biggest environmental problem, is basic sanitation,” said Andrea Correa, the top environmental official in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
“The Olympics has woken people up to the problem.”
For many residents in the area, the lack of sanitation causes Hepatitis A, which is endemic among favela residents, health experts say, and children are frequently sickened by the pathogens that seep from sewage into drinking water pipes.
Irenaldo Honorio da Silva, 47, who leads the residents’ committee in Pica-Pau, a favela with 7,000 residents, told The New York Times that local officials had been promising to address the sanitation crisis for decades.
“They come, and then they go,” he said.
