Jules she/herMar 14

Why we keep swimming in polluted waters

Odd choice of title - it's because we don't have a choice - but interesting article on how wild swimmers feel about the UK'S appalling #SewagePollution

https://theconversation.com/why-we-keep-swimming-in-polluted-waters-researchers-277120

#WaterPollution #WildSwimming #ColdWaterSwimming

Why we keep swimming in polluted waters – researchers

Through navigating pollution, outdoor swimmers are reminded that the health and wellbeing of our bodies is bound to the quality of our waters.

The Conversation
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EAMar 14
@afewbugs there’s a lovely (read: terrible, disgusting) quote about swimming in New York in the early 1900’s or so that was in a newspaper (and subsequently in a history volume that I listened to as an audiobook and therefore don’t have available to quote). Something about having a time tumbling in the waves except for then being confronted with a bit of partly digested cabbage or the body of a cat
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EA
@afewbugs "[...] Pouring sewage into the rivers and harbor was supposed to dilute it and make it disappear, but tides flowed in as well as out. Writing of Coney Island, which became New York City’s beach resort, a reporter noted in 1880 that it was “not pleasant when you are tumbling in the surf to have a decayed cabbage stalk or the carcass of a dead cat strike you full in the face.” Irrefutable statements were rare in the Gilded Age press, but this was one of them.”!
- from The Republic for Which It Stands by Richard White, p503 according to the text search on archive.org
Mar 14 at 3:00pmWeb