The sailors and wind surfers who will take to Guanabara Bay in Rio De Janeiro Brazil at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games should make sure to wear a thick wet suit and and verify that all their vaccinations are up to date.
Why?
Because the bay, which will be the site of the sailing and windsurfing events, is a dump. Only 40 percent of sewage is treated in Rio despite Olympic officials setting a goal of 80 percent, according to the Global Post, and between 80 and 100 tons of trash end up in Guanabara Bay every day.
There's also is the minor issue of human corpses.
Yes, that's right, human corpses. Lars Grael, a Brazilian sailing legend who earned medals at the 1988 and 1996 Olympic Games, has encountered actual human corpses while training in Guanabara Bay.
From a recent Q&A with Esporte Essencial (Translated from Portuguese): Worse than that, it has a very bad quality of water. It's a postcard ugly. You are right that you can create screens to prevent the trash from the Olympic streak and will disrupt a boat, but still, looking at the quality of the water! In Guanabara Bay I've ever come across four times with corpses. Are you be browsing and spending side. Imagine that ... a scene in the Olympics! God grant that this does not happen.
(Emphasis ours)
Following the United Nations Earth Summit in 1992, in which Rio's water quality was harshly criticized, the government secured over $1 billion in loans from Japan for cleanup projects, according to a recent story in the New York Times.
Unfortunately, the attempts at cleaning up the bay has not been successful at all. Mario Moscatelli, a biologist who has been monitoring Rio's water for decades, called the bay a "latrine." The government could deploy aircraft carriers to collect the bay’s garbage and the problem would not be solved. The bay is still a latrine. It’s an insult to Rio’s people to say it will be clean for the Olympics.
Photos of Guanabara Bay (Via AP)
