After much feijoada, Rio residents make poopoo in sea and give people infections

quote:

---

RIO DE JANEIRO — Olympic sailor Erik Heil floated a novel idea to protect himself from the sewage-infested waters he and other athletes will compete in during next year’s games: He’d wear plastic overalls and peel them off when he was safely past the contaminated waters nearest shore.

Heil, 26, was treated at a Berlin hospital for MRSA, a flesh-eating bacteria, shortly after sailing in an Olympic test event in Rio in August. But his strategy to avoid a repeat infection won’t limit his risk.

A new round of testing by The Associated Press shows the city’s Olympic waterways are as rife with pathogens far offshore as they are nearer land, where raw sewage flows into them from fetid rivers and storm drains. That means there is no dilution factor in the bay or lagoon where events will take place and no less risk to the health of athletes like sailors competing farther from the shore.

“Those virus levels are widespread. It’s not just along the shoreline but it’s elsewhere in the water, therefore it’s going to increase the exposure of the people who come into contact with those waters,” said Kristina Mena, an expert in waterborne viruses and an associate professor of public health at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. “We’re talking about an extreme environment, where the pollution is so high that exposure is imminent and the chance of infection very likely.”

In July, the AP reported that its first round of tests showed 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. Experts said athletes were competing in the viral equivalent of raw sewage and exposure to dangerous health risks almost certain.

Now, the AP’s most recent tests since August show not only no improvement in water quality — but that the water is even more widely contaminated than previously known. The number of viruses found over a kilometre from the shore in Guanabara Bay, where sailors compete at high speeds and get utterly drenched, are equal to those found along shorelines closer to sewage sources.

“The levels of viruses are so high in these Brazilian waters that if we saw those levels here in the United States on beaches, officials would likely close those beaches,” Mena said.

Rio won the right to host the Olympics based on a lengthy bid document that promised to clean up the city’s scenic waterways by improving sewage sanitation, a pledge that was intended to be one of the event’s biggest legacies.

Brazilian officials now acknowledge that won’t happen.

Mena, the waterborne virus expert, said it makes sense for athletes to think that deeper into the bay and lagoon would be safer, but the testing doesn’t bear that out.

“One would expect to see more fluctuations with the levels of any pathogen in the water, but it’s not there,” she said.

As a result, none of the venues are fit for swimmers or boaters, she said. Athletes who ingest three teaspoons of water have a 99 per cent chance of being infected by viruses.

In the year preceding the Olympics, AP is examining monthly water samples for three types of human adenovirus as well as enterovirus, rotavirus and bacterial fecal coliforms. The viruses are found in human intestinal and respiratory tracts. They cause digestive illnesses including vomiting, EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA and respiratory problems — all of which would knock athletes out of competition. Serious heart and brain disease are also possible, though rare. One type of analysis tests for adenovirus types 2 and 5, markers for the sewage contamination.

---