There's a lot we'd do to prove a point, but swimming in poop is generally where we draw the line. Yet on July 17, Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, braved the (suspiciously?) green waters of the Seine in an effort to show it's safe for Olympic athletes to compete in at the 2024 Paris Olympics . Having invested over $1.
5 billion trying to make the Seine swimmable, part of us respects the dedication. But given that a June 21 analysis found two kinds of fecal bacteria in the Seine (even before Parisians threatened to poop in the river — more on that in a second), we're not entirely convinced. If you're new to the Paris poop-scapades, allow us to provide some context.
In preparation for open-water events at the Olympics, the French government spent a lot of money trying to make the Seine swimmable. As a form of protest, Parisians threatened to . .
. well . .
. poop in the river. This included a viral website and corresponding hashtag reading #JeChieDansLaSeineLe23Juin (I shit in the Seine on June 23).
The protest predictably earned plenty of coverage, and — as it was designed to do — it got us thinking. Not just about whether it was defensible for the French government to spend so much money preparing its capital for the Olympic Games , but also about what would happen to the athletes if they did swim in poopy water. Now that Hidalgo has officially taken the plunge, we asked an expert what really happens if you swim in poop.
Amesh A. Adalja , MD, is a senior scholar at the .
