Athletes competing in next year’s Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro will be swimming and boating in waters so contaminated with human feces that they risk becoming violently ill.
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Some tests measured up to 1.7 million times the level of what it would take to close a southern California beach.
“This is by far the worst water quality we’ve seen in our sailing careers”, said coach Ivan Bulaja from the Austrian team, who says his sailors have lost valuable training days to illness in the time they have spent on Guanabara Bay.
Rio’s untreated sewage is an ongoing problem In March of this year, Digital Journal reported on the ongoing problem with untreated sewage plaguing Rio de Janeiro and the 15 cities that share the shoreline of Guanabuara Bay, where the Olympic distance swimming, sailing, and rowing events will take place.
But the area that was ruled unfit by the Rio environmental agency for swimming earlier this week was based levels of fecal coliforms, which are single-celled organisms that live in the intestines of humans and animals.
The worldwide Olympic Committee have revealed that they have been assured by the World Health Organisation that their water facilities in Rio de Janeiro are safe. This week the AP threw on some rubber gloves and actually tested for viruses, only to discover the shit has really hit the water.
Rio is infamous for its water being contaminated by untreated human sewage, which often causes young children to develop infectious diarrhea for years (until their bodies develop enough antibodies).
“There’s no point in going on about the quality of the water, the Olympics are going to be in Rio no matter what and so this subject is dead for me”, he adds.
“What you have there is basically raw sewage”, said John Griffith, a marine biologist who examined tests for AP’s investigation.
Such validation would somehow make the authorities hasten their official pledges of cleaning up the mess and stench.
An Associated Press investigation found that the waters wherein the next Olympic Games will be held is unsafe for athletes.
More than 10,000 athletes hailing from over 200 countries are expected to compete in the August 5-21, 2016, games.
In April, an global Sailing Federation official threatened to have the Olympic sailing events moved from Rio’s Guanabara Bay if action wasn’t quickly taken to clean it after a “super bacteria” was found in the bay. “Those kinds of things would be shut down immediately if found here”, Griffith, who works Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, said, referring to the U.S.
A spokesperson for British sailors now in Rio for a test event said the UK competitors were also not too anxious. In addition, he tested for enteroviruses, the most common cause of upper respiratory tract infections in the young, which can also lead to brain and heart ailments.
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Brazilians are exposed to the viruses and diseases but build up immunities. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises anyone heading to Rio to be vaccinated for hepatitis A and typhoid.
