The waters of the Rio Games, poison for the athletes? In any case, water qualityhas everything to make competitive athletes sick. One week before the opening of the Olympic Games in Brazil, on August 5, 2016, Guanabara Bay looks more like a marshy body of water than an idyllic postcard-perfect swimming spot. The most poetic will even be able to see behind the objects floating there, tires, sofas, televisions, the elements of an aquatic discharge.
It is in this nauseating setting that the participants will have to swim (or wade) and compete in the sailing, swimming or windsurfing. A news that worries to the highest degree public health experts. They do not hesitate to compare the quality of this water to that of the sewers and fear for the health of athletes. Renato Castiglia, a Brazilian public health specialist, explains to France news that the degree of danger will depend on the hazard of the weather: “The worst condition we can have is when it rains. There yes, indeed, we have all the drainage of dirty water from the city in the bay and that increases the pollution enormously. In the worst case, a person can catch hepatitis A in contact with these waters, dysentery or skin diseases.”
“Athletes are going to swim in shit”
Others, like Dr. Daniel Becker, a pediatrician living in Brazil and interviewed by the New York Times, are not afraid of outspokenness: “Foreign athletes will literally swim in human shit, and they risk getting sick with all these microorganisms”.
On the side of the organizers of the Olympics, we recognize that the bay is not a long calm river and that it should have been cleaned up to 80%. A measure that remained a dead letter. Anxious to appease the unease, the Olympic Committee with the Brazilian authorities, affirm, according to European 1, that the areas where the tests will take place “respect the standards of the World Health Organization (WHO)”. At worst, athleteswill only have one limited contact with water, they point out. Verdict in a few days.
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