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北京时间 7 月 27 日凌晨，2024 年巴黎奥运会将由一场盛大的游行拉开序幕——别出心裁的是，这次的游行不在体育场中举行，而是塞纳河上。来自 200 多个国家或地区的约 10,500 名运动员将乘船沿着塞纳河自东向西蜿蜒而行，穿越巴黎市中心，途经数个奥运比赛场馆。巴黎市政府和赛事组织者在这条“享有盛誉”的河流上下了很大的赌注：确保参加奥运会的游泳健儿们可以安全地在这条受污染的河流中进行比赛。但他们的努力遭到了质疑。早在今年六月，巴黎市长安妮·伊达尔戈（Anne Hidalgo）宣布她将跳进塞纳河游泳，以表达对河道清理工作的信心时，社交媒体上诞生了一个热门标签鼓励大家在河里拉屎……这或许是种抗议。7 月 10 日，伊达尔戈确实成功游进了塞纳河，还对这次游泳体验给予了很高的评价。但这并不意味着奥运会的游泳项目就万事大吉了。古言有云，人不会两次踏入同一条河流：一切事物都处在不断的变化中，塞纳河水中的细菌含量仍然每天都在波动。至于奥运会选手到底会不会在这条河中游泳，直到他们真跳入水中那一刻之前，没人能给出确切的结论。目前，在河道清理工作方面，赛事承办方基本上已经尽力了，现在主要是细菌水平的变化，而这可能得靠天：如果降水太多，细菌数量就可能会超标；如果阳光不够充足，不能有效地杀菌，细菌含量也会超标。今年六月，西欧初夏的气候异常潮湿，整个六月的河道细菌含量都高出y。于是赛事承办者一边自信地说他们“致力于处理塞纳河污染问题，不做备用计划”，一边宣布了一套备用计划。比如，作为在塞纳河上举行的比赛之一，马拉松游泳比赛的备用计划是将场地换到巴黎城外的马恩河畔韦尔水上运动体育场。这是一个于 2019 年落成的豪华体育馆，奥运会和残奥会的皮划艇和赛艇等比赛将在这里举行。不过，因为这个体育场已经要举办一些划船比赛了，所以铁人三项赛不能在这举行——这是另一项将在塞纳河里进行的比赛。如果细菌含量还是不达标的话，要么推迟比赛时间，要么就把铁人三项降级为“铁人两项”。假如某个比赛选手已经为参加奥运会铁人三项训练了好多年，而强项正是游泳，那么这次降级一定会非常令 ta 气愤。所以说，巴黎奥运会为什么非塞纳河不可？大概因为这条河是他们城市历史和文化的重要组成部分，很长一段时间以来，巴黎一直在努力治水，在国际社会的关注下，巴黎可能是目前唯一一个在这方面大赌一把的城市，尤其还是在天气变化无常的情况下。但巴黎绝对不是唯一一个面临城市水道问题的城市。世界各地的工业化城市都正在进入一个城市水道治理的新阶段，至少对于曾经受到工业污染的河流。在忍受了数十年乃至数百年非常恶心的垃圾河之后，我们或许可以重新到这些城市水道中游泳。美国俄亥俄州的“塞纳河”是凯霍加河（Cuyahoga River），注入伊利湖的凯霍加河是俄亥俄州的主要航道，也是克利夫兰市的水源。1969 年 6 月 22 日，凯霍加河突然起火。甚至有张照片“记录下”了消防员将水喷到河面上试图扑灭大火的景象，实在是荒谬，河流按理说不可能着火。事实上，这张照片是《时代周刊》（Time）在更早的 1952 年拍摄的，1936-1969 年间，这条河流曾因为受到污水排放和工业废弃物倾倒的污染，数次着火。正是这件事引起了广泛的舆论争议，进而促使了美国环境保护局（Environmental Protection Agency）的成立和《清洁水法案》（Clean Water Act）的颁布。今天，当我们回想起凯霍加河着火的景象，再看到这些受过严重污染但已经被清理到一定程度的城市水道时，会觉得，这条河虽然还是很脏，但至少绝对不会再着火了。安妮·杰斐逊（Anne Jefferson）是一位来自美国佛蒙特大学（University of Vermont）的水文学家，研究领域为城市水道，此前曾在位于俄亥俄州的肯特州立大学（Kent State University）待了 10 年，专门研究学校附近的凯霍加河。她表示，凯霍加河着火了十几次，因为许多油状工业废料（石油、油漆副产品等）被倒入了河中。在当时，如果你不小心掉进了凯霍加河，或者是伦敦的泰晤士河，建议马上前往医院治疗。1972 年，《清洁水法案》颁布后，凯霍加河虽然还是很脏，不适合游泳，但已经不再会对健康构成严重威胁了。塞纳河的身世和许多其他工业化城市里的河流类似。工业革命后，它们就变成了流动的垃圾场，承载着人类身体和工业生产的废物，将它们运送出城。在巴黎，工业污染还扼杀了当时城市文化中一个很重要的组成部分——在塞纳河中沐浴。你很难想象，如今拥有“巴黎厕所”恶名的塞纳河，在受到严重污染之前确实是一处胜地，莫奈、雷诺阿、修拉等画家都曾在他们的画作中描绘过塞纳河畔的优美风光，河里曾经还有一些浮动浴室，里面装满了来自城市的未经处理的水——就像驳船一样。在塞纳河举办奥运会游泳比赛的时间可以追溯到 1900 年，但到了 1923 年，巴黎市政府就下令禁止在塞纳河游泳，不过当时还是有人坚持这一“法式浪漫”。到 20 世纪 60 年代，这条河实在是太脏了，到了难以有生物存活的程度，变成了一条生物学意义上的“死河”。河水中那些对人有害的细菌在 20 世纪 60 年代以来大量繁殖,，到了 1985 年，每 100 毫升河水中含有 50 万个大肠杆菌菌落形成单位，大约是目前欧洲可沐浴水菌落含量标准的……[查看全文]
Cleaning Up Paris’s Poop River for the Olympics
Rachel Feltman: One week from today the 2024 Olympics in Paris will begin with a parade—not in a stadium but on a river. Thousands of athletes from more than 200 territories will float on boats down the Seine. City officials and event organizers have placed a big bet on this beloved river: that the infamously polluted waters will be safe for Olympic swimmers to compete in.But their efforts have been met with—well, we’ll say skepticism, to say the least. Back in June, when the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, was set to swim in the Seine to show her confidence in the cleanup efforts, a trending hashtag encouraged folks to poop in the river in—protest? Unclear. Hidalgo did successfully take a dip this past Wednesday and gave the experience rave reviews.[CLIP: Cheering and clapping]Feltman: But that doesn’t mean the Olympic events will go quite as swimmingly. You know what they say about stepping into the same river twice: those things are always changing and always flowing. And the Seine’s bacterial levels are still fluctuating from day to day.For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Today I’m joined by associate news editor Allison Parshall, who investigated this high-profile cleanup attempt for us.So, Allison tell me: Are Olympians going to swim in the river or not?Allison Parshall: I would love to be able to tell you—I would peer into my crystal ball—but I think until there are bodies in the water, I’m not going to be able to say one way or the other [laughs]. And that’s mostly because they’ve basically done all that they can at this point from the perspective of, you know, cleaning up the river. The main problem right now is bacteria, and some of the things that could cause bacteria levels to be higher are kind of just at the whims of the weather: It’s if it’s too rainy, bacteria counts can be too high. If it’s not sunny enough, because sun can kill the bacteria—the bacteria counts can be too high.So throughout June, basically, the bacteria counts were much higher than, I think, anyone expected or wanted. And that’s because the—Western Europe, in general, had an unseasonably wet summer, at least in the beginning.So basically, after a very wet June, the organizers, who had been very proudly saying, “There is no backup plan. We’re all in on this end. There is no backup plan. There’s no plan B,” announced a backup plan.So the backup plan for the marathon swimming events, at least, which is one of the ones that would be in the Seine, is this nautical stadium outside of the city. It’s this very fancy facility inaugurated in 2019. It’s already hosting the Olympic and Paralympic canoe, kayak and rowing events, so there’s that.Feltman: Yeah, well, it’s good that they have that backup.From above, this facility definitely looks like that kind of freaky ocean arena from The Hunger Games, but ...Feltman: [Laughs] I’m, I’m sure it’s lovely, though. I’m sure it’s a lovely place to be and definitely better than a river full of poop, in any case.Parshall: It’s probably hard not to be better than a river full of poop.Parshall: But basically this nautical stadium, it’s already hosting those boating events, but the triathlon wouldn’t be able to be relocated there—so that’s the other event that would be swimming in the Seine. So that they would just have to postpone that and hope the bacteria levels go down. Or if they don’t, it could just get downgraded from a triathlon to a duathlon, which I feel like is a different sport.Feltman: Yeah, I think if I had trained for years to specifically be in the triathlon in the Olympics, and swimming got cut, and that was, like, my main strength, I’d be pretty ticked off. It makes you wonder why Paris, like, took such a chance on the Seine in the first place.Parshall: This river is such an important part of their city’s history and culture, and they’ve been trying to clean it for a long time, and so it might be one of the only cities right now where we’re seeing them place such a big bet in the international spotlight on being able to clean this up, especially when it’s kind of at the whims of the weather.But they’re definitely not the only city facing this problem with its urban waterways. Industrialized cities across the world are reaching this kind of new phase of their river cleanup, at least for these rivers that were once so polluted by industry. And it’s possible that after, you know, decades, centuries of being very unsightly waste dumps, we might get to swim in a lot of urban waterways again.So I’ve got kind of, like, a personal touchstone with this. I grew up in Ohio. My Seine, as I like to say, was the Cuyahoga River ...Parshall: Have you heard of the Cuyahoga River?Feltman: I have in the context of it being, like, a river so gross that it inspired us to create the Environmental Protection Agency [laughs], which is ...Parshall: [Laughs] Yeah, when I was a kid ...Parshall: When I was a kid it was just, like, the place that we would go as a family on the weekends. We would walk and bike the towpath, and then there was this farmers’ market where we would get ice cream and corn on the cob; it was very Ohio. But I didn’t realize until I grew up that most of the people like you that knew of the Cuyahoga knew of it because they’d seen pictures of it on fire—like, the surface of the river burning, or at least ...Parshall: The industrial waste ...Feltman: It’s striking [laughs].Parshall: Yeah, yeah—that picture in particular. There’s this one particular photo, and it shows these firefighters spewing water onto the surface of the river to, you know, try to put out the fire, and it looks so preposterous because a river’s not supposed to be on fire.So when I picture these urban waterways that have just been so polluted but have since been relatively cleaned up, I picture this infamous image of the Cuyahoga on fire and then what I know it as today, which is kind of a muddy, lazy river but definitely not on fire.And I actually talked to a hydrologist about this—her name’s Anne Jefferson. She researches urban waterways at the University of Vermont, but she spent 10 years of her career at Kent State University, studying the nearby Cuyahoga.Anne Jefferson: The Cuyahoga River didn’t just catch fire once; it caught fire [a] dozen-plus times. It was oil. It was paint byproducts. It was all sorts of industrial byproducts. It—also sewage—the sewage is not the part that’s gonna catch fire, but it’s, you know, if you fell into the Cuyahoga, or if you fell into the Thames in London, the advice was that you take yourself to the hospital immediately.Parshall: I can’t say that I really want to swim in the Cuyahoga River, even these days—like, it generally looks pretty muddy—but it’s no longer a flaming health hazard, so there’s that. And its misfortunes really helped galvanize support for new regulation: that’s the Clean Water Act of ’72.Paris’s river may not have caught fire, but it kind of has a similar story, as do many other urban rivers. After the industrial revolution they just become this dumping ground that carries all of our waste, both of our bodies and of our factories, out and away from cities. And in Paris, this killed what was a really important part of the city’s culture at the time, which is bathing in the Seine.Feltman: That’s so wild. Like, I, I can know intellectually that before cities were super polluted, their rivers were nice places to be, but I still have trouble picturing people, like, you know, bathing in the Seine.Parshall: Yeah, I don’t know that this was all—the case with every industrialized city, but it was definitely the case with Paris. I mean, a lot of cities, you know, they kind of grew up around the industrial revolution. But with Paris there are several very famous paintings by Monet, Renoir, Seurat that depict these riverside scenes, and there’s these famous floating bathhouses that were filled with untreated water from the city—like, basically barges.And swimming in the river was largely banned in 1867. But that was just in the city, and then in the suburbs it was banned in 1923, but some people kept swimming in it. Like, Paris did hold the 1900 Olympics swimming events in the Seine. So this would be—if they do swim, it’ll be upholding this 124-year-old tradition. But by the 1960s the river was just well and truly disgusting, and it had been declared biologically dead.Feltman: I mean, first of all, continuing to swim in it—extremely French. Second of all, what does it, what does it actually mean for a river to be biologically dead?Parshall: Yeah, I asked Anne Jefferson that question because I also had never found a definition. She has never found a definition, so it might be kind of, like, an advocacy phrase.Parshall: People say it a lot—a vibe. It—basically it means, roughly, there’s no fish, or there’s no “desirable species,” quote, unquote ...Parshall: But the bacteria, as undesirable as they may be—or some of them, at least—those were thriving, definitely, in the 1960s. And later—in ’85, I think, was the low point—it was measured—the Seine was measured to have 500,000 colony-forming units of E. coli per 100 milliliters of water. That’s, like...[full transcript]
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