“ATHLETES WILL BE LITERALLY SWIMMING IN HUMAN CRAP,” local pediatrician Dr. Daniel Becker just told The New York Times, referring to the Olympians who will soon be competing in Rio de Janeiro’s notoriously polluted Guanabara Bay.
Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesTrash floats in Rio De Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay.
Nearly seven years ago, when the Brazilian port city first won its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, the world wondered whether Rio’s infamous pollution problem would be taken care of by the Games’ start. Sadly, with opening ceremony just days away, we now have our answer.
Although Brazil pledged back in 2009 to make a $4 billion effort to eradicate 80 percent of the 8,200 liters of sewage that reach Guanabara Bay every second (that’s about 50 bath tubs’ worth), only $170 million has been spent — and it shows:
Garbage floats in the Cunha canal, which flows into Guanabara Bay.Mario Tama/Getty Images
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Tons of dead fish float on the waters of the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon.CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images
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A boy looks for items to recycle along the Cunha canal.Mario Tama/Getty Images
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Two scissor crabs stay beside a dog skull at the mangrove area of Guanabara Bay.ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP/GettyImages
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A boy reaches for a ball along a polluted canal in the Mare favela community complex. The Mare complex is one of the largest favela complexes in Rio and is challenged by violence, pollution, and poverty.Mario Tama/Getty Images
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Trash piles up near a barrier meant to prevent it from flowing downstream in the Cunha canal.Mario Tama/Getty Images
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A man receives a haircut near the remains of demolished homes in the Metro Mangueira favela.Mario Tama/Getty Images
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Raw sewage drains from an occupied building in the Metro-Mangueira favela.Mario Tama/Getty Images
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Kids play soccer by open sewage amid the rubble of destroyed homes in the Metro-Mangueira favela, located approximately 750 meters from Maracana stadium, the site of the Olympic Games opening ceremonies. Mario Tama/Getty Images
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A Metro-Mangueira favela resident washes kitchen items with a small hose amid the rubble of the community's destroyed homes.Mario Tama/Getty Images
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Trash lines the shores of the Cunha canal.CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images
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An abandoned drainage pipe sits on the edge of Guanabara Bay.Mario Tama/Getty Images
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Municipal workers pick up dead fish floating on the waters of the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon.CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images
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A stream of polluted water at the Favela da Mare shantytown complex.YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images
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A boy looks for items to recycle along the Cunha canal.Mario Tama/Getty Images
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Birds sit on a barrier meant to block garbage from flowing downstream along the Cunha canal.Mario Tama/Getty Images
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A sculpture made by students and teachers of the Fine Arts School with rubbish removed from Guanabara Bay.VANDERLEI ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images
Rio’s Major Pollution Problem In 31 Shocking Photos
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What's truly scary, however, is what you can't see in the photos. The waters of Guanabara Bay are filled with vomit-inducing rotaviruses as well as literally deadly superbacteria.
All in all, as an infamous test conducted by the Associated Press last year discovered, the bay contains virus levels 1.7 million times higher than what would be considered hazardous in the waters of, say, California.
“We just have to keep our mouths closed when the water sprays up,” Afrodite Zegers, a member of the Dutch sailing team, told the New York Times.
With little else to be done at this point, some Olympians, including some members of the sailing teams from both Spain and Austria, have already come down with gastrointestinal illnesses.
And it doesn't look like the efforts that have been made will do much to change that. As longtime municipal engineer Stelberto Soares illustrated to the New York Times, “They can try to block big items like sofas and dead bodies, but these rivers are pure sludge, so the bacteria and viruses are going to just pass through."
Based in Brooklyn, New York, John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of expertise include modern American history and the ancient Near East. In an editing career spanning 17 years, he previously served as managing editor of Elmore Magazine in New York City for seven years.
Savannah Cox holds a Master's in International Affairs from The New School as well as a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and now serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Sheffield. Her work as a writer has also appeared on DNAinfo.
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Kuroski, John. "Rio’s Major Pollution Problem In 31 Shocking Photos." AllThatsInteresting.com, August 3, 2016, https://allthatsinteresting.com/rio-olympics-pollution. Accessed July 16, 2025.
