BBC News Review: Water pollution at the Rio Olympics

source: BBC Learning English     2016年8月2日
The Rio Olympics are starting in a few days, but there are concerns over water and air pollution in Rio. Join Sian and Catherine in News Review as they bring you this story and the language you need to understand it.
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The story

With just four days until the start of the Olympic Games in Brazil, reports indicate that levels of pollution in Rio de Janeiro remain alarmingly high.

Guanabara Bay, where sailing events will be held, is heavily polluted by raw sewage and chemicals. Research also suggests the authorities have failed in their promise to clean up Rio's air quality.

Wyre Davies - BBC news

Cleaning up Rio's chronically polluted waters was a promise that the city made when it was chosen to host the Olympic Games, but it simply hasn't been kept.

We're out now on Guanabara Bay, where Olympic sailing events will take place. The smell from the oil on the surface is overpowering and these are waters full of physical waste. Furniture, even dead animals, have been found in the water here.

But most of all it's the sewage from the favelas, and even the middle-class parts of town, that floods down into the bay, making this one of the world's most polluted waterways.

Key words and phrases:
alarmingly: worringly
filthy: very dirty
sewage: waste water from toilets
teeming with: containing a large number of (usually) living things
unfazed: not surprised or worried
favela: poor and crowded area of a city in Brazil