[HN Gopher] Seine reopens to Paris swimmers after century-long ban
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Seine reopens to Paris swimmers after century-long ban
Author : divbzero
Score : 90 points
Date : 2025-07-05 17:43 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lemonde.fr)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lemonde.fr)
| david927 wrote:
| Just beware of the sharks
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Paris
| alwa wrote:
| Oh my.
|
| "Based on: An original idea"
|
| I suppose so...
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| it's entertainment, not science. if it fulfills that purpose
| then it's good. nothing else required.
| david927 wrote:
| I mean, you need some plausibility to the imaginative leap.
| It can be crazy but as long as it doesn't disturb the
| audience's suspension of disbelief, you're fine, and that's
| a strange line.
|
| There's nothing wrong with mocking the premise of this
| movie; I saw it and it deserves no defense.
| dvh wrote:
| Bull sharks are known to swim 4000km inland (even 1100km in
| US).
| david927 wrote:
| There are around 8 to 10 major dams or weirs between the
| ocean and Paris.
| spauldo wrote:
| I think you'll find that in the US they've been known to swim
| about 680 miles inland.
| tmtvl wrote:
| Sharks only eat like once or twice a week and are very shy
| creatures, so not much to worry about. You're more likely to be
| killed by a coconut.
| david927 wrote:
| It was a joke about a silly movie premise
| rossant wrote:
| That comment might also have been a joke, ironically and
| intentionally missing the point that perhaps there aren't
| that many sharks in the Seine.
| seszett wrote:
| Or coconuts.
| kevinpet wrote:
| One could be carried there
| laxd wrote:
| So could a shark
| jedimastert wrote:
| > The seasonal opening of the Seine for swimming is seen as a key
| legacy of the Paris 2024 Olympics, when open-water swimmers and
| triathletes competed in its waters which were specially cleaned
| for the event.
|
| Meanwhile...
|
| > The Olympic legacy of the Seine has taken another hit, with a
| second athlete taken to hospital after competing in the murky
| waters.
|
| https://www.thetimes.com/sport/olympics/article/second-olymp...
| yread wrote:
| It seems neither of them were clearly linked to the river? The
| articles on this guy were kinda clickbaity saying he " _was_
| rushed to the hospital " when he tweeted that he rushed to the
| hospital because of the stomach bug
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Since the reason for not swimming in the Seine was sewage, a
| "stomach bug" is exactly the problem you'd expect to develop
| after swimming in it. To rule the water out, you'd need
| evidence that, say, the guy ate at a restaurant with several
| other people who didn't go swimming, and they got sick too.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Why not just compare the incidence of sickness at the
| swimming event vs other triathlon swimming events and see
| if 2(or whatever the number of competitors affected was) is
| abnormal and work from there?
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Yep. That has, in fact, been done and seems to show an
| elevated risk of GI illness in Olympians who swam in the
| Seine compared to previous Olympics.
|
| https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-
| reports/exclusives/1116...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That would be an approach to the question of "is the
| Seine dirtier than other triathlon events?", but it
| wouldn't address the question of "how did this guy get
| sick?"
| layer8 wrote:
| Meanwhile:
|
| > Paris officials say they have taken several measures to
| ensure swimmers can safely enjoy the long-anticipated
| reopening, including daily water pollution testing and
| implementing a swim test for bathers. The water quality is
| "exceptional", said Marc Guillaume, the prefect for the Ile-de-
| France region that includes Paris. "We are monitoring two
| bacteria, E. coli and enterococci, and for one we are ten times
| below the thresholds and for the other more than 25 times
| below," he said.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| let him swim in it. that's the real test. if the official
| claims it's exceptional then surely it's not a problem for
| him.
| padenot wrote:
| He did last year, alongside mayor Hidalgo and others, such
| as Tony Estanguet, who is a former athlete and was
| overseeing the olympics and the minister for sports.
|
| Article in French: https://www.franceinfo.fr/les-jeux-
| olympiques/paris-2024/bai...
| bambax wrote:
| People living in houseboats along the river have been swimming in
| the Seine forever. And every summer, young people, possibly a
| little drunk, jump into the water as a dare from bridges near
| Notre-Dame.
|
| But yes, this is more mainstream and open to all so it's kind of
| big news.
| wdavidw wrote:
| I live on a houseboat just after paris in Meudon, facing
| Boulogne, we go paddle and swiming with the kids since they are
| 5 years old. The thing is to avoid going to the river the days
| after big rains. It is a very pleasant area along the Saint
| Germain Island (bras mort de l'Ile Saint Germain)
| forty wrote:
| The news is that it's now allowed / legal
| cladopa wrote:
| when I was a kid, I swam in the Seine one day out of young
| stupidity and the next day I got hives on my skin and it was
| very itchy. I learned the lesson and luckily in a couple of
| days I was back to normal. Some of the people in my group(that
| swam with me) had longer lasting problems.
| nextos wrote:
| One of the benefits of EU regulations is that they have brought
| some order to the dumping of raw sewage into rivers and seas. But
| there is still a lot of work to do.
|
| Local authorities from lots of EU regions generally avoid
| measuring water quality after rainy days because raw sewage is
| still often dumped under those conditions.
|
| Even in Basel, where the Rheine is really clean, authorities
| sometimes advise not to swim.
| noughtme wrote:
| The source of the Seine is in Burgundy. Not a European, so
| wondering what the relationship between the Seine and EU
| regulations is.
| vasco wrote:
| The seine, burgundy and paris are all part of EU.
| maeln wrote:
| An important part of the pollution in the Seine is from Paris
| itself. Due to being an old city, the sewer system and the
| flood water system (i.e rain) goes through mostly the same
| tubes and are dump directly in the Seine. This leads to the
| river being full of biological contaminent, a.k.a, shit.
|
| A lot of effort was done to remediate this very old issue,
| with a very big push before the Olympics games (but
| improvement to the sewage system has been going on for
| years).
| p1necone wrote:
| Turns out you can dump raw sewage in rivers at any point
| along them, not just the source.
|
| Also Burgundy is just another part of France which is in the
| EU, so not really sure what you mean.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Are there other options when it rains? I imagine they're not
| dumping sewage into rivers for fun.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| The uk escaped this madness, here a entrepeneur can still take
| a free market bath as god intended.
| https://www.sewagemap.co.uk/
| cm2187 wrote:
| The water is "so clean" that you have mandatory showers before
| going in... But it's France, so how would you live without
| pointless regulations?
| jt2190 wrote:
| People wear all sorts of oils and perfumes and deodorants that
| should be washed off before swimming.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| it's a river. Couple hundred people swimming in it with
| deodorants is meaningless.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Maybe that was the initial thought? It's a river, a handful
| of homes emptying sewage there is meaningless. And
| centuries later, here we are.
| baud147258 wrote:
| I'd say it's the same rules as any other (swimmable) river
| in France, from the big to the small. Maybe it'd make more
| sense just for smaller rivers, but where do you draw the
| line? Like it's easier and simpler to just use the same set
| of rules
| cdrini wrote:
| I was dubious so did a fact check, and it is indeed necessary!
| Not sure what the reasoning is, I wonder if it's some rule
| about public swimming which was originally created only for
| pools? Or maybe there are some wildlife concerns with certain
| lotions/etc getting in the water.
|
| > Y a-t-il des douches ? > > Oui ! Chaque site de baignade
| propose des douches - obligatoires avant d'aller se baigner -,
| un acces a des toilettes, un poste de secours ainsi que des
| espaces pour s'asseoir et profiter du soleil.
|
| https://www.paris.fr/pages/baignade-en-seine-toutes-les-ques...
| seszett wrote:
| Isn't a shower before swimming in a public pool a universal
| thing? It's always required in France.
| cm2187 wrote:
| A swimming pool isn't a gigantic body of moving water that is
| already barely clean enough to be swimming in it in the first
| place.
| spauldo wrote:
| I thought running through the shower area between the
| changing room and the pool and trying to avoid the cold water
| as much as possible was the norm, but maybe it's different in
| France.
| cycomanic wrote:
| For anyone visiting Paris, the sewer museum is definitely a
| unique experience and worth a visit (although smelly). It gives
| you a grasp of what a monumental it was to build the sewers back
| then. You can also see the overflow reservoirs that dump water
| into the Seine when there is heavy rain (they were talking about
| the cleanup efforts leading to the Olympics when I was there some
| years ago).
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| I'm going to swim a 1000m race [0] there tomorrow morning! Wish
| me luck HN!
|
| [0] https://openswimstars.com/paris/
| darekkay wrote:
| Bonne chance!
| wartijn_ wrote:
| Good luck!
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Udachi!
| selimnairb wrote:
| You know that river was bad if they closed it in 1925.
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(page generated 2025-07-05 23:00 UTC)