The race to clean the Seine River

As the world prepares for the start of the Olympic Games in Paris later this month, it is still unclear whether the city’s iconic Seine River will be clean enough for competitive swimming events.

In a new video, Yale’s Jordan Peccia and Vasilis Vasiliou discuss the perennial challenge of pollution that caused officials to ban swimming in the river more than a century ago, the investments made by French leaders to bring the Seine to safe swimming standards in time for the Olympics, and the weather-related factors that could still disrupt open water swimming events during the Games.

And they discuss why this public health challenge is relevant to communities worldwide dealing with water pollution.

Peccia is Thomas E. Golden, Jr. Professor and Chair of Chemical & Environmental Engineering at the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science. Vasiliou is the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology and chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health