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TechnoratiOlympic bosses could face multi-million pound lawsuits if athletes suffer pollution-related health problems
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is taking a huge gamble with the health of athletes competing in Beijing - and risking its own reputation and finances. It is leaving itself and other Olympic bodies vulnerable to legal action by competitors who experience adverse reactions to the city's notorious pollution.The IOC could face multi-million pound lawsuits from hundreds of affected sportsmen and women, as could the Chinese, British and other national Olympic bodies. The victims might argue that the games' authorities knowingly placed them at risk of health damage and required them to compete in conditions that jeopardised their wellbeing.
Even mere prolonged severe eye, nose, throat and lung discomfort might be grounds for legal recourse. In such cases, it could be argued that expecting competitors to suffer choking, burning sensations was an unreasonable expectation by Olympic chiefs.
In a worst-case scenario, the IOC and other Olympic authorities could be tied up in legal cases for years and be bankrupted if the courts rule that they acted recklessly by giving the green light to the games in a heavily polluted city.
The day before the Olympics opened, pollution levels were nearly four times above the World Health Organisation's recommended safe levels. If the games go ahead under these conditions, some competitors could suffer lung and heart damage from the double whammy of heat and pollution. The danger is particularly great for high-exertion endurance athletes, such as cyclists, rowers and long-distance runners and walkers.
In most cases, the adverse reactions are likely to be temporary, but no one can be certain that some athletes will not collapse and that others will not suffer longer-lasting effects that may undermine their post-Olympic performance in follow-on sports meetings scheduled later this year.
No, I am not scaremongering. A Beijing marathon last February left 22 athletes hospitalised, two in a critical condition.
I hope my fears are misplaced, but on the eve of the Olympics, a BBC monitoring unit found that the level of particulate matter (PM10) in Beijing's air was 191 micrograms per cubic metre. This is nearly four times the World Health Organisation safety target of 50 micrograms per cubic metre.
It is this reality that has prompted the Ethiopian world champion long-distance runner, Haile Gebrselassie, to pull out of the marathon. He says pollution levels in the host city are so bad that it would be unsafe for him to compete.
Gebrselassie is right. Despite some improvements, the Beijing air is still so toxic on most days that it is doubtful whether athletes can participate safely - let alone fairly - at this month's games.
The head of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, has brushed aside pollution fears, praising Beijing's "extraordinary" efforts to improve air quality.
He said there was "absolutely no danger" to the health of athletes taking part in events that last less than one hour. But he conceded that if pollution levels got out of hand, events lasting longer than 60 minutes might have to be relocated or deferred.
Echoing the bland assurances of the Chinese authorities, Rogge stressed that it was important to distinguish between harmless fog and toxic pollution - implying that much of the cause of low visibility was mere humidity and mist. The distinction is a valid one, but I am not confident that this controversy is a needless fuss about fog.
My scepticism seems to be shared by at least two British Olympic journalists who have road-tested the Beijing air this week.
Tom Fordyce, a BBC sports correspondent, did a run around Beijing last Monday and reported what happened to him:
My throat has started to feel sore, as if I had a cold coming on ... there's a strange lumpy feeling halfway down my throat ... The metallic taste in my mouth remains ... The haze obscures anything more than 100m away. I've picked a bad day - today the BBC reading registers 292 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic metre (the World Health Organisation target is 50) ... my eyes have started to feel gritty, as if I'd been out all night in a club full of smokers ... The stinging in my throat gets worse ... My lungs feel half their normal size ... At the end I'm coughing like a 20-a-day man.
Tom Fordyce's experience was shared by Guardian journalist Paul Kelso when he took a jog around the Olympic stadium on Tuesday:
It's five years since I smoked a cigarette, but the acrid taste and mild burning at the back of the throat was familiar. By the time I turned for home, having circumnavigated the stadium more slowly than the entire athletes parade will take at Friday's opening ceremony, I was more than ready to stop ... I'm glad I don't have to compete in the Beijing air this month.
If these are the effects on light joggers, imagine what Beijing's usually foul air will do to elite athletes going all-out for a gold medal, vigorously inhaling huge amounts of air for prolonged periods. I suspect they will suffer extreme discomfort at best, and possibly physical collapse and even heart failure at worst.
The British Olympic Association spokesperson, Simon Clegg, is unfazed. He has dismissed concerns that the smog in Beijing could impact on the performance of athletes. "It's not a concern to us," Clegg told the Guardian. "The expert advice that we are getting is that the situation continues to improve."
He might be right. I hope he is. But what if he is not? Is it fair to play Russian roulette with the health and lives of the world's greatest athletes? And what if it all goes pear-shaped, with competitors being unable to complete their events or collapsing and ending up in hospital? Could some even die?
The IOC and its national counterparts had better get their lawyers briefed and their finances beefed up. There are bound to be some competitors who will suffer adverse reactions to Beijing's poor air quality. They are likely to sue and they are likely to win. If they do, it will be a sad day for the Olympic spirit but a wholly self-inflicted wound by misguided Olympic administrators who could have, and should have, anticipated the risk to athlete's health.
Peter Tatchell is a human rights campaigner, and a member of the queer rights group OutRage! and the left wing of the Green party.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
10 Comments so far
Show AllAnd the IOC should also be forced to account for the millions of dollars it sits on. Athletes struggle financially to make it to the games and yet IOC personnel lavish upon themselves all kinds of goodies, not to mention a rather impressive building in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Humans as ants.
Are we all too different?
We poison ants with sugar bait, bring them in. Give them what they want to kill them. Humans are the same. T.V., Internet, etc. Even those who think they are above it, the 'smarter ones' as they think, and maybe they are. still part of the group, the organism. Can they escape? No, It encompasses us all; clothes, house, education, car, it takes you over. Ignorance reigns supreme. Are the majority of humans ignorant or just easily manipulated, either way does it make a difference. We fight never ending wars until the next one, for so called freedom and peace. So many theories in socialism but so little action. Will the people ever rise up ? Will they ever realize? Can we over come? Will the masses always be ignorant and understand they are being played like a fiddle; is there hope. We live as slaves working for the master, playing the so called debt of what we stand against.
What are our options, Dem's, or Repubs, same shit different party. Slaves till the end. Patriotism has us lost in strait jackets when we should be rising up against oppression. The people need to unite; Liberal Libertarianism is the only way to go. We need to fight for us the people; retake our democracy, city by city, state by state. Our, yes our, money is being thrown away, given to corrupt people. Lets stop the madness. No more taxes to the wretched filth. They are all corrupt. We need to stand up together, no parties. We need to be sick of getting raped!!! Revolution is the only way. Revolution!!! Wars are started to make money. They make money off of us, yes us, that's you, every chance they get.
The problem is that we are all part of the machine. We are all part of the machine. Your job, your life is a part of it. You know it, you may even like it, you might not even know. You are being paid to make money for others. This is how most of up lead our lives, working to make money for others. In you job, paying off your house, your car, your loan, etc. all making money for others. Most of us will make money for others our whole life. Aren't you sick of it? Isn't it enough? When will you stand up? Now is the time!!! Make a stand!!! Your whole life for what? You live, you work for them, you die. Now is the time!
Our phones are all bugged, our movements are watched. This is not a democracy, they have taken over. Will you wait until you are in prison without a court hearing? This is no longer our country. They have burned our Constitution.
What to do is your next question, mine too. How about demanding with you co-workers the pay you deserve! How about demanding from the government not to pay for a war you don't want! Or for debts you didn't make! Vote them all out!!!
vote for you friend, or the person you know. Not for the one who just got $100,000 from the oil industry, or for the one who just got $200,00 to make the people have diabetes, and Asama. Stand up, start a change. Lets not spend more than we have, so we can stop being controlled by the banks. Most of us are with you, lets stand together, all off up. Not for Republicans or Democrats, not for Obama, or McCain's, but for us, the people. FUCK THEM!!! Let us, the people take our lives back! Start a local group. Take over the city council. Small steps to a big change. No more kings. Tell the feds you are no longer a part of the union. Lets start our own country without them. Lets start real freedom. And lets start it now!!!
Just after Kurt Vonnegut died, I bought a few replacement copies of his books; I don't know what became of the original paperbacks.
One was "Hocus Pocus", published in 1990. I finally picked it up last week to re-read. As with Vonnegut's other works, I again found myself reading passages that seemed startlingly fresh and relevant.
Here, the protagonist– a teacher and Vietnam vet named Eugene Debs Hartke– encounters a "typical Ruling Class chowderhead", a parent attending graduation ceremonies. The parent asks Hartke why he seems so depressed; Hartke has just been fired by the college trustees, but he doesn't feel inclined to say so.
So…
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"He told me to cheer up, that 1,000,000,000 Chinese were about to throw off the yoke of Communism. After they did that, he said, they would all want automobiles and tires and gasoline and so forth.
I pointed out that virtually all American industries having to do with automobiles either were owned or had been run out of business by the Japanese.
'And what is to prevent you from doing what I've done?' he said. 'It's a free country.' He said that his entire portfolio consisted of stocks in Japanese corporations.
Can you imagine what 1,000,000,000 Chinese in automobiles would do to each other and what's left of the atmosphere?"
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I've lost track; do the literati still refuse to take Vonnegut seriously?
I don't believe there is any case for suing the IOC; the athletes are not forced to compete. But it was ridiculous to award a filthy city with the Olympics.
Of course, the real crime is that China's pollution becomes the whole world's pollution. It's a shame the athletes have to breathe that air. It's a shame anyone has to breathe that air.
Ba - I think you may be wrong in your assertion that we will have to 'get used to it'.
The OECD and Chatham House in England released a paper that expects world oil production to drop drastically in the next 7 - 10 years, with production dropping 50% by 2015.
If anything, we should be getting used to any oil producing region being invaded by the US, Russia or China.
All in the name of 'security' and 'fighting terrorism' of course...
From what I understand, inhaling particulate matter deeply into your lungs means it stays where it is trapped and can help cause emphysema or cancer decades later.
This kind of pollution is another really good reason to get OFF fossil fuels and onto wind and solar.
Sue China for hosting the games?
In what court?
Anyway, that is just absurd.
Maybe you could get away with suing the IOC...but even that is questionable.
The fact is that the atheletes and their nations choose to go to the games, knowing the conditions. Then they choose to compete. They could do like this one athelete and back out if they are concerned.
How in any way does this make China liable?
If I go on a trip to Tokyo and get lung cancer, I cannot sue the Japanese government. I know this is a little different, but not much.
All this anti-Chinese sentiment is getting a bit hard to take. I am sympathetic to Tibet, and am a supporter of the Dalai Lama, however I also think that the Olympic Games should be non-political.
Oh, and the selection process is corrupt, we all know that, but that is not the issue here anyway.
Jaguara
As someone who lived in Atlanta, one could see the whole Olympic bid process was one giant bribery process. All the crooks on the committee would come to town, expect to be put up for free in the best hotels, dined for free in the best eating places and if they saw say a piece of jewelery in a shop window they expected it to be delivered to their room later as a 'gift'. And if I remember right, some of the kids of the committee members mysteriously got nice college scholarships.
Meanwhile, those summer games in Atlanta went off quite well. I don't remember any athletes dropping dead from the heat. The only impact it had that I remember was that they scheduled the Olympic marathon to start just after sunrise early in the morning. Just like they've done with the Peachtree road race for ages. But I was at the track and field stadium almost every night and those were all rather pleasant evenings.
And Atlanta's pollution disappeared for those two weeks. All the tales of lots of visitors and crowding scared most Atlantans out of town. All the traffic jams disappeared and amazingly enough the pollution went with them. Beautiful blue skies for the two weeks and everyone there had an amazingly good time meeting other people from around the world in an atmosphere of peace.
Which is why I'm a bit skeptical of all of these gloom and doom stories. Especially when this one was obviously written by someone in Britain who's source of info is just watching the BBC.
Please stop using the word "ironic' it is says absolutly nothing about accountability.This spectacle in China was planned........
See the article by Naomi Wolf on the security complex/oppression in Bejing. But the meta message to the world is that with the coming overpopulation crisis and surveillance culture; we must learn to live in very polluted cities. Soif olimpicathelethes can compete in games in such a polluted city as Bejing, the rest of us surley can live in them .For ther is now way out of environmental degradation and you better get used to it.
Awarding the Summer Olympics to Beijing was not the first time that the IOC "believed" the blather told to them by desperate bid organizers who "aided" their cause with bribes (see Atlanta '96 re: summer temperatures & Salt Lake City '02 - plain old bribery exposed). The current Olympics is a manifest case of the corruptness of the bid process. It would be ironic justice if this entire exercise blows up in the collective faces of the Chinese and the IOC in the form of lawsuits. Of course, it one thing to win a judgement in court. It is an entirely different matter to collect.