Water concerns for Rio Olympics

Olympic athletes to swim, boat in Rio’s sewage-filled waters

RIO DE JANEIRO — The waters where Olympians will compete in swimming and boating events next summer in South America’s first games are rife with human sewage and present a serious health risk for athletes, as well as for visitors to the iconic beaches of Rio de Janeiro.

An Associated Press investigation found dangerously high levels of viruses and bacteria from sewage in venues where athletes will compete in the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic water sports.

The AP conducted four rounds of tests starting in March. The results have alarmed international experts and dismayed competitors training in Rio, some of whom have already have fallen ill with fevers, vomiting and diarrhea.

These ailments could knock an athlete out for days, potentially curtailing Olympics dreams and the years of hard training behind them.

“This is by far the worst water quality we’ve ever seen in our sailing careers,” said Ivan Bulaja, a coach for the Austrian team, which has spent months training on the Guanabara Bay. “I am quite sure if you swim in this water and it goes into your mouth or nose that quite a lot of bad things are coming inside your body.”

Sailor David Hussl has already fallen ill.

“I’ve had high temperatures and problems with my stomach,” Hussl said. “It’s always one day completely in bed and then usually not sailing for two or three days.”

Water pollution has long plagued Brazil’s urban areas, where most sewage isn’t collected, let alone treated. In Rio, much of the waste runs through open-air ditches to fetid streams and rivers that feed the Olympic water sites and blight the city’s picture postcard beaches.

Dr. Richard Budgett, the medical director for the International Olympic Committee, said after seeing the AP findings that the IOC and Brazilian authorities should stick to their program of testing only for bacteria to determine whether the water is safe for athletes, as that is the accepted norm globally.

Many water and health experts in the U.S. and Europe are pushing regulatory agencies to include viral testing in determining water quality because the majority of illnesses from recreational water activities are related to viruses, not bacteria.

Brazilian authorities pledged that a major overhaul of the city’s waterways would be among the Olympics’ most significant legacies. But the stench of raw sewage still greets travellers arriving at Rio’s international airport and prime beaches remain deserted.

AP Fernando Spilki, virologist and co-ordinator of the environmental quality program at Feevale University, holds up a water sample, backdropped by the Marina da Gloria, Zone 2, in Rio de Janeiro. Spilki said the tests he recently conducted for the Associated Press so far show that Rio’s waters “are chronically contaminated.”