A closer look
Blue Lagoon in Iceland is completely artificial and is literally just the industrial runoff water from the adjacent Svartsengi geothermal power plant, despite being marketed as a mystical natural healing wonder. The milky blue water owes its famous aesthetic to silica mud pumped out from deep underground to generate electricity, which is then conveniently dumped into a man made lava rock basin for affluent tourists to cheerfully bathe in. People travel to the absolute ends of the earth and pay staggering admission fees to slather themselves in power plant wastewater, proving once again that with enough clever marketing and a nice gift shop, you can convince upscale travelers to eagerly swim in municipal industrial discharge
