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Over 80 Percent of China's Well Water Is Polluted (voanews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: 32.9 percent of the 2,103 underground wells tested in China received grade 4 for water quality -- meaning they're only fit for industrial use and are not safe for drinking water. Another 47.3 percent received a grade 5 for water quality. "These latest statistics are an indicator of how bad the underground water quality is. The sources of pollution are widespread and include a lot of agricultures. I think that would be the main source of pollution," Dabo Guan, professor at the University of East Anglia in Britain, told the New York Times. "From my point of view, this shows how water is the biggest environmental issue in China. People in the cities, they see air pollution every day, so it creates huge pressure from the public. But in the cities, people don't see how bad the water pollution is," said Guan. According to statistics from the country's Ministry of Water Resources, 70 percent of lakes used as a water source, 60 percent of underground water, and 11 percent of water in reservoirs did not meet the country's safety standards. Even though the study measured water sources close to the surface, the results are shocking and depict the adverse effects air pollution has in China currently and in years to come.
I wonder how the USA would rate if as many people were still using well water? Not the city water is much better. How much of that is polluted again?
http://www.the-american-intere...
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2...
See subject: With the Chinese in the housing debacle/hedgefund scams based on chinese savings, we owe them money... right?
NOW, didn't Clinton PROMISE them land AND WATER in the USA if we don't make good on what the scamming greedy corporate bastards had their political puppets make?
APK
P.S.=> Correct me IF I am wrong on any of that, it's been so long since I read it (& it digusted the hell out of me, since the "common-man" is always the one taking a beating at the hands of these scumbags, including fighting their wars... top that off w/ China recently saying "We're far from afraid of going to war with you" & DO YOU BLAME THEM? Honestly, I don't!)... apk
Countries that treat their environment like a sewer should not be surprised to find themselves eating (or drinking) shit.
No sympathy whatsoever for such. It was all fine when it earned money and you could pretend it did not exist because it was not effecting you personally.
Too late to cry about it now...you reap what you sow.
That actually sounds low to me.
We are advised to never drink well or tap water in China, only bottled water.
There is widespread pollution in China.
Film at 11:00.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
In a recent Chinese language paper on high pH well water, it was noted that they can generate biofuel from contaminated well water with alkaline concentrations as high as 11.0 pH, and achieve 80 percent conversion efficiency. It's in publication in July 2016.
Paper in Bioresource Technology.
Maybe the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing? It's a large country, and a lot of the water resources are contaminated.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The water may be a bit polluted, but the market is healthy. Would you rather poison the market with stifling regulations instead? Probably not.
I live in a different country with a much waster government and welfare system but you can either regulate it (as in ban pollution and use of un-renewable resources for instance, many persons are ok with laws and law enforcement at-least?)
Or which is worse but mostly due to how wealth accumulate but likely powerful enough you just need to set the right price on pollution and taking resources.
If 1 liter of fresh water did cost $1 or if 1 kg of CO2 release cost $5 things would be different.
Seem like it may take around 2000 gallons to make a pair of jeans, the price above would quickly make such jeans something most people would never ever wear.
Now since water is used for food I'm not really for it and here we've got cheap water, I mostly picked the price because it was still cheaper than bottled water and some people buy (or need) that so it didn't seemed unreasonable but would still change the usage enormously!
we are glad for its sacrifice. Keep it up! (That's what she said.)
Open some Heineken factories there to clean the water like Netherlands does. :3
Something that I learned from professor Higgs is that You must have the right sample to have the real source of your problem.
You just can't allow individuals and businesses to participate in the free market with no concern for keeping shared natural resources like air and water clean. Even the staunchest free-market thinker Milton Friedman was a proponent of a cap and trade system as a way to financially account for the pollution produced by business.
India should have won the prize for pollution (despite being a democratic country)
For thousands of years the Chinese have been killing each others, and polluting the well of the enemy has been a common tactic
In many regions of China, the well water have been known to be toxic because of that
But of course, the recent pollution does deepen the crisis - but we still can not discount the historical fact of well poisoning that has been happening for thousands of years in China
How about instead of attempting to shame China we consider the fact that that well water was never that great to begin with even prior to industrialization. The fact that generation after generation of Chinese people found a way to make that water potable, typically by brewing it into tea, should be commended. Granted it will likely take more than a handful of tea leaves to correct the current situation I have little doubt the people of China are capable of solving this issue.
Middle class people in China mostly drink bottled and filtered water -- though they do cook with tap water. It's really the poor who get stuck drinking the tap water. Of course there was a study a few years ago showing that about half of the bottled water was no better than tap water, and some was actually worse....
Seem like it may take around 2000 gallons to make a pair of jeans, the price above would quickly make such jeans something most people would never ever wear.
Or the capitalists would gain efficiencies, recycling inside their own plants to get that number down to 1 gallon per jeans or less. But we don't make the capitalists pay for their polution (here or in China), so they pollute, because it's easier.
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They are in a war with the west and are not only continuing to emit loads of pollution, but are still building out new coal plants. As such, those coal plants, along with their industrial companies, will dump into the air and water.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We can beat China! USA! USA!
Well then, Chinese well water is, well, pretty un-well.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I live in Belgium and numbers are similar. Agriculture causes massive widespread pollution of wells.
But in the cities, people don't see how bad the water pollution is," said Guan.
Given how every drinks bottled water, and bottled water is supplied absolutely everywhere, and there are warnings to look out for counterfeit bottle water which may have been filled from the tap then recapped I'm sure even in the cities people are well and truly aware how bad the water pollution is.
You can't drink it. It's bad.
How big do you think China is exactly? Their carbon emissions are a global problem. How long until their water pollution is as well?
It doesn't sound like this contamination is easily cleaned through the normal processes nature typically uses. Eventually their water contamination becomes OUR water contamination. It's not like you can "build a wall" and barricade the border of your water table...
It is due to smell and taste, not it being toxic. I would guess it is the same in China. Its not actually toxic, its just deemed as not being drinking water.
Oh this is an eastern thing is it? /* looks out my window at the coal fired power station which started operating here in western Europe only 2 months ago */
Most Chinese don't give a shit about communism, but the girls are awesome. Thin bodies, beautify faces, and very tight pussies. Think about that the next time you're porking that fat sloth you call your wife.
Pollute the well water, people get poisoned and die.
Overpopulationist viewpoint in practice - more dead people is good.
Do you have 50 new 1GW coal plants going up in Europe EACH YEAR? Hell, does the entire west COMBINED have 50 new 1GW coal plants going up each year? .1-.5 km in front of you?
NOPE. For that matter, Does your coal plant have active pollution control, BUT TURNED OFF, on it? IOW, do you have a brown cloud that surrounds your house at all times and prevents you from seeing even
Now the Chinese gov is under fire for their HORRIBLE pollution. It is the worst that the world has EVER seen. Yet, they drive gas/diesel cars that have full pollution control on them . So, that brown cloud does not come from the vehicles. So, where does it come from? It comes from the coal plants that have pollution controls but their gov does not require them to turn it on. In fact, the gov will tax you heavy if you do. They stop their subsidies. So, why is China doing that?
And BTW, if you really want to see emissions, look at what OCO2 shows. OCO3 will be coming on-line later this year and Japan's new carbon monitoring sats fires up later this year, or early next. Between the 4 sats, you will see that Europe actually emits slightly more than what it is considered to, BUT china will be almost DOUBLE what the idiots in 350 consider it to be.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
How badly is Korean, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore affected by Chinese air pollution? i.e. Are they wasting their time trying to contain their own gas emissions? How much would China need to emit to be considered an act of war?
Or the capitalists would gain efficiencies, recycling inside their own plants to get that number down to 1 gallon per jeans or less. But we don't make the capitalists pay for their polution (here or in China), so they pollute, because it's easier.
Regardless capitalism isn't the problem.
The problem is that destroying and using up the earth is so cheap.
I've seen those gold digger shows on TV, the latest version is in the jungle.
Why should we remove trees, dig up the earth, rinse it and rinse away much of the soil and so on just to look for a few gold flakes?
To them it's likely mostly an issue about whatever it's worth the fuel and their time but what should all that destruction be free?
I've earlier read about mercury and how some use mercury to get gold and for them it's efficient and the mercury are cheap but to actually remove / try to limit that spill of mercury cost a lot. The mercury they buy and spill out has a price which is very wrong.
Our earth isn't free and not worth anything, set a correct price on it and things will change.
It's only in the last century that enough people have realized that the earth is neither an endless source nor a bottomless sink; it had been noticed previously on a smaller scale by many failing civilizations but they usually don't leave written records. In their own individual ways, the stupid, lazy, greedy and selfish continue to destroy the earth. All of us who regularly drive a vehicle are contributing more than our fair share of pollution (especially if you drive a VW).
During China's rapid growth over the last 30 years, little thought was given by the Government to the environmental effects of the resulting thousands of mines, power stations, factories, refineries and millions of vehicles, or if thought was given, it was seen as a necessary price. Regulations to prevent pollution may exist but the widespread and endemic corruption means that it's much easier and cheaper to pay officials to turn a blind eye than to stop polluting.
The Flint water crisis was primarily due to the state and the city of Flint being bankrupt.
If the emergency manager didn't squelch the EPA report, or did just a tiny bit of due diligence, then the water situation would be fine, and a *lot* of money would have been saved.
But if you want to blame the water situation on Flint going bankrupt, then you may as well blame the situation on the big bang. Or the fact the human evolved. Or the derivatives trading that led to the financial crisis. Clutch at straws all day. The emergency manager WASTED money, and seriously poisoned a generation of children. Cognitive dissonance doesn't change the facts on the ground.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Do you have 50 new 1GW coal plants going up in Europe EACH YEAR?
Nope but then we don't plan to provision some 80GW of nucelar power which is nice and CO2 free either.
Yet, they drive gas/diesel cars that have full pollution control on them .
Oh the irony of this statement while complaining about the Chinese turning off pollution control is Volkswagonlicious.
And now that you're done with your anti-China rant go back and re-read my post and realise that I wasn't excusing China, but vilifying the policies of Good old Europe as well. Because quite frankly in terms of expanding power capacity the Netherlands has last year commissioned a far higher percentage of polluting power plants than China. Germany a few years earlier made a nice point of shuttering all their emission free power plants an admittedly with a long term plan to go greener decided the best course of action was importing dirty power from neighbours in a knee jerk political stunt.
Shit stinks regardless if it comes from the arse of a diseased feral Chinese dog or a pampered European chiwawa.
One of the places of the worst pollution on Earth was London 100 years before modern environmental regulations. So much coal and such burned for heating (but not much wood, as it was all cut down in England). There wasn't a good measure of smog available at the time, but the estimations are it was worse than modern Beijing or the peaks in LA before modern air standards were implemented.
We like to pick on China and India and such, but the US has had burning rivers, and London had smog so thick Merry Poppins walked to work on the smog.
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