The water quality of the pools at the Rio Olympics took its toll on athletes with many complaining of eye irritation and turning to drops for relief.
Rio Games officials had to empty the competition dive pool at Rio on Sunday night, having watched it become progressively greener and murkier with under water visibility reduced to zero over the course of a week. Replacing the water in time for the early-morning training and the 11am competition was a massive challenge with the pool holding almost 3,780,000 litres.
Officials provided an array of different and implausible diagnoses, from too many people in the water to not enough wind in the air. Finally, they determined that the changing colour was the result of an unplanned dump of hydrogen peroxide into the pool, which neutralised the chlorine, allowing algae to bloom. Hydrogen peroxide can be used to clean pool water but not in conjunction with chlorine.
