Toxic-Sludge-Gargling Hippie Swims America's Dirtiest Rivers

Hey, what the hell have you ever given to the environment?  Don’t feel bad yet – you probably give to the environment in ways you don’t even realize: carbon dioxide, for the plants.  Gas that leaks out of your shoddy American-make automobile, for the caribou.  Instant pop-corn bags that you peed in and then threw out the window because you didn’t want to get off the couch, for the majestic bald eagle.

All one man has given is his naked body, which he’s been dragging through the toxic rivers of America to make a “statement.”  Christopher Swain is living the environmentalist martyr’s dream…  

In 2003 and 2004, he swam the length of four of America’s polluted waterways: the Charles River, Lake Champlain, the Hudson River, and the Columbia River, typically swimming about seven miles every day. Each day, Swain took photographs of the dirty waterscapes, and jotted extensive notes in a journal about each of the trips. “The water boasts the bouquet of a pond life smoothie: notes of mud, plants, tannin, poop, and gasoline, are all in evidence,” he wrote of his journey down Lake Champlain.

He has continued swimming, aided by the deformed hand that has since grown out of his left leg.

Swimming in this sort of pollution sounds like it could be hazardous to your health, and Swain knows for a fact that it is: despite taking frequent breaks to gargle with hydrogen peroxide, he’s gotten countless ear, respiratory, and lymph node infections.

Yup, your peepee gets in his ears!  But can one man make a difference?  No.  No one told Christopher Swain that, though!

Swain, 40, is a father of two, and is passionate about changing the world for his children by making the younger generation aware of how important it is to keep the earth clean.

I assure you that his children would rather have a father not dead from a rare lymphatic disease than some river without Drano in it.

But no matter – Swain is undertaking his longest swim yet, from Marblehead, Ma. to Washington, DC.  If you live along that route, please refrain from flushing for a few months until he reaches his goal.

Source: Gimundo via Neatorama.