Aquatic athletes competing in the forthcoming Rio Olympics have been advised to keep their mouths shut while competing because they will “literally be swimming in human crap” and could pick up heavy duty illnesses from the contaminated water.
Swimming and sailing in toxic filth is a far cry from the Olympic ideal but according to health experts, the raw sewage, household debris, and even the occasional bloated corpse which can be found infecting the waters of Rio’s Guanabara Bay and Copacabana Beach, will all combine to create a potentially deadly brew for the hearty Olympic athletes who are chasing greatness and aiming for glory at the 2016 Summer Games.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that marathon swimmers, sailors, and windsurfers who will be participating in events held at Guanabara Bay, where a bloated corpse was found floating recently, should take extra care because the polluted water is apparently a lot more contaminated than previously thought.
Ahead of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, the Brazilian government promised to eradicate over 80 percent of the pollution and waste from the bay. They have now admitted their clean-up goals won’t be met in time for the Games, and competitors will just have to do their best among the flotsam, jetsam, and pure unadulterated filth.
Something smells rather fishy about the Rio Olympics! (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
In an age when desperate whales choking on plastic bags are approaching random deep sea fisherman for help, the state of the world’s oceans has never been more dire.
A recent report by the Inquisitr claims our world is drowning in plastic, and our oceans are toxic.
Charles J. Moore, a U.S. merchant marine captain and founder of the Algalita Marine Research Institute in Long Beach, California, said he’s utterly shocked at the huge increase in plastic litter found floating on the ocean’s surface in the past five years.
“Plastic is choking our future in ways that most of us are barely aware.”
In just three days, Captain Moore and his team estimated that the urban hubs of Southern California were responsible for polluting the sea with 2.3 billion pieces of plastic.
Garbage patches of floating plastic comprised of everything from shampoo bottles and toothbrushes to cigarette lighters and tires lie accusing and apathetic in the remote Pacific.
Passing seabirds often mistake these brightly colored objects for squid or fish. Weighed down with plastic fragments, the birds then return to their nests and unwittingly feed the plastic to their young.
Their stomachs are bursting with the toxic material, and they are unable to ingest any real food.
Skeletal remains of dead chicks lie scattered on remote islands, and where their stomachs should be lies nothing but a tangled mass of plastic. The extent of the plastic pollution cannot be over-estimated.
Science writer Gaia Vince has estimated that every square kilometer of the world’s oceans now contains an average of 18,500 pieces of plastic, and that’s before you add all the other putrid filth and raw sewage into the equation that awaits Olympic hopefuls at Rio.
Rio’s Copacabana Beach at the mouth of Guanabara Bay, which will host many swimming events, is thought to be a particularly polluted place, and the bay is actually more contaminated than environmentalists and scientists previously thought.
One Brazilian doctor named Daniel Becker has refused to pull any punches and warned Olympic marathon swimmers to take a deep breath because they will “literally be swimming in human crap.”
“Foreign athletes will literally be swimming in human crap, and they risk getting sick from all those microorganisms.”
Dutch sailing team member Afrodite took a pragmatic approach to the grim warnings and said, “We just have to keep our mouths closed when the water sprays up.”
The coach of the Spanish woman’s sailing team, Nigel Cochrane, said he was very concerned about warnings of “super bacteria” in the waters of Rio, and he has called the state of affairs “disgusting.”
Australian gold medalist sailors Mat Belcher and Will Ryan have had plenty of experience of Guanabara Bay, and none of it’s been too pleasant.
“There’s all sorts of rubbish – dead animals, furniture, plastic bags, a lot of coke cans. It’s not ideal.”
Come on in! The water is lovely. (Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images)
(Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
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