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Determined to prevent rain from dampening the spirits -- not to mention the crowds -- on opening day ceremonies, the government plans to seed any threatening clouds with chemicals to dispel, or at least delay, rainfall.

With the Olympics only a month away, athletes cannot risk falling sick and are taking few chances.

"You don't really want to go sailing around in pollution and I've never sailed in a place that's more polluted than this," said Australian coach Euan McNicol, a former skiff world champion.

The most shocking story is that of Australian sailor Elise Rechichi, who swallowed water when she slipped on a boat ramp during a test event here in 2006. It took her 10 months to recover from severe gastric trauma that had her in and out of hospital.

"It's made us all reasonably wary of what's going on,"

But for many Olympic sailors it's what they can't see in the water that is their greatest concern.

Boats, bulldozers and the military have been deployed to remove the eyesore.

On Saturday, officials briefly claimed victory over the algae saying the course had been cleared.

But Qu Chun, the 2008 Olympic sailing competition manager said the bloom has not been totally wiped out, estimating that 2-5 percent of the course was still affected, down from nearly a third a week earlier.

"Just like you and I inhale oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, these bugs breathe in Arsenic +3 and breathe out Arsenic +5,"

Arsenic +3 is the most poisonous form of the element, because it acts much like phosphorous.

Most life on Earth needs phosphorous to build the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which supplies cells with energy. Arsenic can substitute for phosphorous and upset the ATP molecule, essentially starving cells to death.

n the arsenic-rich, oxygen-poor waters of Mono Lake, Oremland and a team of researchers found that bacteria turn the lethal toxin to their advantage through photosynthesis.

One conclusion to be drawn from the Yale-Columbia project is the need for better data, which requires funds.

Experiences like the recent biofuels surge, which is driving up food prices, show how treacherous even well-intentioned decisions about the environment can be when they're uninformed.

The same holds for consumers, who sometimes think paying somebody to plant a few trees will compensate for flying around the world in airplanes.

For such decisions, data are essential. If we're going to avoid squandering our natural resources, the quicker we begin to rely more on facts and less on assumptions, the better.

Some countries simply lie or make up the facts.

Today's Russian bureaucrats may still be fudging its environmental figures.

Among the worst offenders were Japan, South Korea, Brazil, the United States, Italy and Paraguay.

(While there are good comparative data on ozone, smog also includes nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides and other components that are poorly tracked in most nations.) Among the best industrial countries were Malaysia, the United Kingdom and all of Eastern Europe (a legacy of the Soviet nuclear program).

Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which have more severe water problems.

Brazil is another country whose high rank—34th—is deceptive.

Brazil is a vast land blessed with an abundance of water, which yields energy relatively cheaply with no carbon emissions

Brazil is now the world's fourth biggest emitter of carbon, mainly due to the felling of trees.

By contrast, Belgium and the Netherlands, which share much in terms of population and geography with their neighbors, suffer from neglect of the environment—particularly in protecting native habitats.