Pollution at the Summer Olympics
They are as much a part of the Olympics as the rings and the medals and the doping suspicions: the predictions of calamity in the months preceding the Games.
In London, it was security; in Beijing, it was smog; in Sochi, Russia, it was construction delays. One imagines that at the first Olympics in 776 BC, there was much fretting about the suitability of the chariot course.
For Rio 2016, the concern sounds like a tag line from Jaws: Is it safe to go in the water? So far, the answer is no.
Rio knew its waterways were a problem when it submitted its Olympic bid a decade ago, but said part of the new infrastructure would include sewage-treatment facilities that would clean up the raw waste that flows into Guanabara Bay, Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon and Copacabana Beach. Those grand plans haven’t been realized, and even much smaller water- treatment efforts have not been completed, leaving several Olympic venues a literal cesspool of water-borne viruses.
In July, The Associated Press tested shoreline waters where rowers, sailors and long-distance swimmers will compete and found “disease- causing viruses directly linked to human sewage at levels up to 1.7 million times what would be considered highly alarming in the U. S. or Europe.” Athletes would be competing “in the viral equivalent of raw sewage.”
This most obviously concerns marathon and triathlon swimmers who spend a great deal of time in shoreline waters, but also the sailors and canoeists who are typically drenched by surf while competing. A German sailor who completed a test event in Guanabara Bay in August developed infections on his legs that had to be painfully scraped off. A followup AP study found the viral levels in the water were high even in offshore waters some distance from the sewage-entry points.
The response from Rio officials has been to promise that the waters will be clean by next summer. The sewage still won’t be treated, but a new system of pipes will dump it elsewhere. They also promise to implement viral testing — previously, the Rio organizers said they would stick with bacterial testing, but experts have said those tests offer a much lower standard, in part because bacterial levels fluctuate greatly short term. A hot, sunny day can kill surface bacteria, but viral testing gives a more accurate picture of the health risks posed by the waters.
And the health risks are extreme: with levels as high as those seen in the Brazilian waters, an athlete who swallows three teaspoons of water has a 99 per cent chance of infection, one expert told the AP.
Rio officials have yet to begin viral testing, so it’s unclear what, exactly, they will do if they discover levels similar to those found with independent testing. And even if virus levels are reduced dramatically, they could still be several thousand times higher than normal acceptable standards. There have been efforts to clean up Rio’s waters for years, and all they have to show for it are sick athletes and a series of photographs of garbage and dead fish floating in Olympic venues.
There has been speculation the last resort — the nuclear option — is to move all the water events to some other part of the Brazilian coast, like a satellite venue. It would be embarrassing, but safe.
But this is another part of the Olympic tradition — the discussion of emergency contingencies as the Games grow nearer. It is Rio’s turn to see if it can dodge its particularly foul bullet.