If you'd rather not risk disgusting infections and other diseases, leave the sludge swimming to Christopher Swain, who's spent years of his life swimming through some of America's most disgusting waters to raise awareness of environmental pollution. He's currently swimming from Boston to the noxious harbor waters of Washington, DC, stopping in at hundreds of schools along the way to help kids learn about recycling.
Environmental hero, or just an idiot? You be the judge.
Swain has been focused on his mission for quite some time. In 2003 and 2004, he swam the length of four of America’s polluted waterways: the Charles River, Lake Champlain, the Hudson River, and the Columbia River, typically swimming about seven miles every day. Each day, Swain took photographs of the dirty waterscapes, and jotted extensive notes in a journal about each of the trips. “The water boasts the bouquet of a pond life smoothie: notes of mud, plants, tannin, poop, and gasoline, are all in evidence,” he wrote of his journey down Lake Champlain.
Swimming in this sort of pollution sounds like it could be hazardous to your health, and Swain knows for a fact that it is: despite taking frequent breaks to gargle with hydrogen peroxide, he’s gotten countless ear, respiratory, and lymph node infections. But, as he told ABC News in 2004, “I realized that if somebody doesn’t put themselves on the line, nothing changes.”
Link (Photo by Carrie Branovan)
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by gatsbyhawk.
Anything that can be made into a blog with advertising revenue and other sources of profit I suppose.
Granted there is some to be desired, and there is still work to be done, but it's far from a sewer.
Someone should let this self-destructive egomaniac know that protecting natural life means taking care of your own well-being as well and avoiding juvenile oneupmanship attempts. Above all, set a good example. Don't go out giving students bad ideas.
Lost cause anyway. Pollution will stop only when we as a species die off or leave the planet.
There are plenty of other things he could do to raise awareness other than this.
I'm sure we'll be hearing about him coming down with some weird cancer b/c of these BS stunts.
..when all the toxins and chemical elements that you aren't supposed to bathe in finally catch up to him, his medical care will be a burden to our already over-burdened healthcare system. nice one!
Well, nothing did change.