Guanabara Bay is known as Rio’s ‘latrine’ – but it has been chosen as the place for the Olympic sailing competitions. Sailors in test events have already fallen sick or collided with floating rubbish in the 17 mile-wide expanse of water. Children reveal to MailOnline how they earn a pound a day sifting through the rubbish to help pay the family bills. What they claim to have found will send a chill down any athletes spine: human waste, syringes and dead bodies.
It’s nicknamed Rio’s ‘latrine’, where six million people’s waste ends up in a stinking, rubbish-laden stagnant mass of water.
But as the South American city prepares to host the Olympic Games, Guanabara Bay, venue for this year’s sailing competitions is under intense scrutiny.
Sailors in test events have already collided with floating debris and many others falling ill with vomiting and rashes as Rio faces calls to clean up the bay, and protect athletes from potentially dangerous hazards.
But it’s not just household rubbish: human waste, blood-filled syringes, and even dead bodies have been discovered amongst the floating mass.
Yet not everyone in Rio wants to see Guanabara free from rubbish.
Along the edges of the 17-mile-wide bay, much of which is bordered by sprawling favela slums, many desperately poor families depend on the murky, trash-ridden waters to eke out a living.
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