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News: Water at Olympics venues "basically raw sewage"
Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 43,331
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Water at Olympics venues "basically raw sewage"
Source
Quote:
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- Athletes competing in next year's Summer Olympics here will be swimming and boating in waters so contaminated with human feces that they risk becoming violently ill and unable to compete in the games, an Associated Press investigation has found.
An AP analysis of water quality revealed dangerously high levels of viruses and bacteria from human sewage in Olympic and Paralympic venues - results that alarmed international experts and dismayed competitors training in Rio, some of whom have already fallen ill with fevers, vomiting and diarrhea.
It is the first independent comprehensive testing for both viruses and bacteria at the Olympic sites.
Brazilian officials have assured that the water will be safe for the Olympic athletes. But the government does not test for viruses.
Extreme water pollution is common in Brazil, where the majority of sewage is not treated. Raw waste runs through open-air ditches to streams and rivers that feed the Olympic water sites.
As a result, Olympic athletes are almost certain to come into contact with disease-causing viruses that in some tests measured up to 1.7 million times the level of what would be considered hazardous on a Southern California beach.
Despite decades of official pledges to clean up the mess, the stench of raw sewage still greets travelers touching down at Rio's international airport. Prime beaches are deserted because the surf is thick with putrid sludge, and periodic die-offs leave the Olympic lake, Rodrigo de Freitas, littered with rotting fish.
"What you have there is basically raw sewage," said John Griffith, a marine biologist at the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project. Griffith examined the protocols, methodology and results of the AP tests.
"It's all the water from the toilets and the showers and whatever people put down their sinks, all mixed up, and it's going out into the beach waters. Those kinds of things would be shut down immediately if found here," he said, referring to the U.S.
The AP commissioned four rounds of testing in each of those three Olympic water venues, and also in the surf off Ipanema Beach, which is popular with tourists but where no events will be held. Thirty-seven samples were checked for three types of human adenovirus, as well as rotavirus, enterovirus and fecal coliforms.
The AP viral testing, which will continue in the coming year, found not one water venue safe for swimming or boating, according to global water experts.
Instead, the test results found high counts of active and infectious human adenoviruses, which multiply in the intestinal and respiratory tracts of people. These are viruses that are known to cause respiratory and digestive illnesses, including explosive diarrhea and vomiting, but can also lead to more serious heart, brain and other diseases.
Kristina Mena, a U.S. expert in risk assessment for waterborne viruses, examined the AP data and estimated that international athletes at all water venues would have a 99 percent chance of infection if they ingested just three teaspoons of water - though whether a person will fall ill depends on immunity and other factors.
In its Olympic bid, Rio officials vowed the games would "regenerate Rio's magnificent waterways" through a $4 billion government expansion of basic sanitation infrastructure.
It was the latest in a long line of promises that have already cost Brazilian taxpayers more than $1 billion - with very little to show for it.
Rio's historic sewage problem spiraled over the past decades as the population exploded, with many of the metropolitan area's 12 million residents settling in the vast hillside slums that ring the bay.
Waste flows into more than 50 streams that empty into the once-crystalline Guanabara Bay. An eye-watering stench emanates from much of the bay and its palm-lined beaches, which were popular swimming spots as late as the 1970s but are now perpetually off-limits for swimmers.
Tons of household trash - margarine tubes, deflated soccer balls, waterlogged couches and washing machines - line the shore and form islands of refuse.
Starting in 1993, Japan's international cooperation agency poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a Guanabara cleanup project. The Inter-American Development Bank issued $452 million in loans for more works.
A culture of mismanagement stymied any progress. For years, none of four sewage treatment plants built with the Japanese funds operated at full capacity. One of the plants in the gritty Duque de Caxias neighborhood didn't treat a drop of waste from its construction in 2000 through its inauguration in 2014. For 14 years, it wasn't connected to the sewage mains.
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Omg 
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 26,488
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This is an awful issue, don't get me wrong.
But what is your issue with the Olympics? Any negative Olympic thread is almost always from you.
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Member Since: 10/19/2010
Posts: 16,335
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Literally a mess. 
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Member Since: 3/24/2012
Posts: 15,013
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Disgusting, I would REFUSE!
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 40,803
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Ew 
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Member Since: 5/18/2012
Posts: 20,576
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This is gross, seriously.
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Member Since: 5/2/2012
Posts: 15,418
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Quote:
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Extreme water pollution is common in Brazil, where the majority of sewage is not treated. Raw waste runs through open-air ditches to streams and rivers that feed the Olympic water sites.
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Yikes...
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Member Since: 3/18/2012
Posts: 15,751
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they definitely will be for Rio 2016. I saw an article like a year ago showing the venue and it was completely disgusting and how they were completely behind schedule of "making" the venue 
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Member Since: 11/18/2010
Posts: 33,622
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The Rio Olympics are gonna be a huge mess. Quite literally apparently.
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Member Since: 9/4/2012
Posts: 12,421
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Member Since: 4/16/2011
Posts: 20,617
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Quote:
Originally posted by jpow
This is an awful issue, don't get me wrong.
But what is your issue with the Olympics? Any negative Olympic thread is almost always from you.
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Are you a pressed Brazilian by any chance?
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Member Since: 10/2/2011
Posts: 4,285
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Rio wont be ready. Bookmark me.
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Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 3,292
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Quote:
Originally posted by Espresso
Rio wont be ready. Bookmark me.
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It was really irresponsible to give brazil both the World Cup & the Olympics in a span of 2 years, it's not like they had all the venues ready, most of them had to be built, and that's ****ing expensive, add corruption and you got yourself a party of public debt.
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Member Since: 10/2/2011
Posts: 4,285
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Quote:
Originally posted by TheLastChord
It was really irresponsible to give brazil both the World Cup & the Olympics in a span of 2 years, it's not like they had all the venues ready, most of them had to be built, and that's ****ing expensive, add corruption and you got yourself a party of public debt.
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There's athletes that are local celebrities in some countries in Asia and Eastern Europe that I'm thinking of - if they get some serious illness people are going to be PISSED and Brazil ain't seeing another event for decades, if not longer.
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Member Since: 1/2/2014
Posts: 1,109
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What did they expect after that horrendous World Cup, complete with unfinished stadiums and rigged matches? If Brazil's government were responsible they never would have agreed to host either the WC or the Olympics, both of which have a net negative impact on the host country's economy if they don't already have the infrastructure and stadiums.
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 7,974
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Well it was always going to be difficult following London (  ) but this really does sound like it will be a mess 
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Member Since: 7/9/2010
Posts: 28,061
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Member Since: 3/14/2013
Posts: 19,483
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Gross. I have the urge to scrub myself clean with clorox just reading this.
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Member Since: 6/25/2010
Posts: 18,931
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Gross, but not surprising.
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Member Since: 11/18/2010
Posts: 33,622
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Quote:
Originally posted by Espresso
Rio wont be ready. Bookmark me.
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The IOC must be kicking themselves in the teeth for even awarding Rio the games.
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