During a Mother’s Day stroll at Rock Creek Park, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shared pictures of himself and his grandchildren swimming in waters that were known to be toxic.
Despite a current National Park Service warning against touching the water in the park in Washington, D.C., “due to high bacteria levels,” Kennedy is shown in one of the Sunday images completely submerged in the water, with his grandchildren swimming. According to the same notification, swimming and wading are prohibited because of the health dangers.
“Stay out of the water to protect streambanks, plants and animals and keep you and your family (including pets!) safe from illness,” according to the advisory. “Rock Creek has high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens that make swimming, wading, and other contact with the water a hazard to human (and pet) health.”
Kennedy wrote in an X Sunday post that he had gone for “a swim with my grandchildren” in Rock Creek after hiking with his family.
Due to contamination, swimming has been prohibited in Rock Creek, the Potomac River, and other surrounding waters in Washington, D.C., since 1971.
According to a 2022 D.C. government microbial source tracking report, ambient water monitoring for Rock Creek revealed “chronic elevated levels” of E. coli.
According to a 2002 assessment by the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, “fecal coliform” germs from sewage are also dumped into Rock Creek, the Potomac, and other tributary waters from combined sewers during storms.
Last year, Kennedy disclosed that he had previously had neurocysticercosis, a parasitic brain ailment associated with pig tapeworm larvae.
Seizures, headaches, dizziness, impaired vision, blindness, psychosis, or memory loss are all symptoms of the illness. Kennedy’s spokeswoman stated in 2024 that the matter was settled over a decade ago.
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Kennedy’s swimming pictures are the most recent in a series of outdoor incidents that have attracted notice and criticism from the public.
Last year, Kennedy claimed to have received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute regarding a whale specimen he had collected two decades prior. He added that he had once picked up a bear cub that had been struck by a van with the intention of skinning it, but instead he abandoned it in Central Park in New York City.
