Ew.

We talked a lot about how air pollution in China might affect the Olympics, but we didn't talk too much about the pollution in the water.

You probably assumed (as I did) that the Olympic athletes would be bringing their own drinking water, but they can't bring enough for sailing. It turns out that there's too much algae in the water and the sailing events won't be able to go on unless there's a massive clean-up effort. So, students and others are volunteering to shovel the algae out of the water and cart it away to be fed to pigs and other animals. The New York Times reports that although human and agricultural waste often produces "red tides" of algae blooms, this green algae is most likely the result of increased rainfall and warmer than average temperatures.