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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.
City water? Funny you mention that here they sent out notices that the city water did not meet EPA requirements 3 months after the incident.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
That is Why We have an EPA. We use to have Polluted Air and water back in the 70's.
Assuming the GOP does not get their way getting rid the Environmental Laws it will Continue to stay Relatively clean.
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.
Aren't all US municipal water supplies required to send out the results of their annual audits? The city I live in sends out a multi-page report every year that they've indicated is required, and it's filled with the results from the independent tests that were done. Which, for as long as I've lived here, has boiled down to "all is well". By all indications, if they ever fail to meet the required standards, they're required to indicate what steps they're taking to correct the issues immediately.
Sure, there are isolated incidents, but they're noteworthy because they're unusual, not because they're the norm.
There is widespread pollution in China.
Film at 11:00.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Don't forget: all those "small government" types would like to starve the agencies that do this analysis of the funds they need to operate. But somehow, the "free market" will fix any contamination issues.
Waiting for those "troll" mods!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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!
You do realize that the EPA was brought into existence by the uberRepublican, Richard Nixon, right?
Except for the 13 million people in the US drinking well water with elevated levels of Arsenic. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/... For that though, I think Bangladesh is #1.
Yes - absolutely. George H.W. Bush's administration got the 1990 extensions to the clean air act passed that were very successful. Environmental protections used to be bipartisan.
Then one party (I'll let you guess which) abandoned any pretense of care for the environment and have actively pushed back against any environmental protections (and not just regarding climate change). That isn't to say under the democrats it has been perfect either. The Flint water crisis was primarily due to Michigan but the Feds (EPA) were asleep at the wheel too.
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.
Please, Nixon was most certainly not an "uberRepublican" by today's standards (shoot, by today's some of his policies would be of the Left) and even by the standards of the day he was only a bit right of middle. The Southern Realignment was still under way when he was in office so defining him under modern party terms doesnt make sense.
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They weren't measuring "well water" as you mean it. They were using shallow wells that were underground surface water, and wells that drained from lakes. Aquifer ground water isn't what was measured.
""In Chinese cities, drinking water often comes from deep underground sources, which are not easily polluted,"
The deep well water is fine. The shallow wells that pull mainly pooled surface water. None of TFAs showed a well. All the "pollution" was shown in surface water only. This looks like more FUD. And from what I can tell from reading TFA, pulling from a lake is considered an "underground well" by the measurement standards used. How's the tap water in Flint doing?
Learn to love Alaska
China is nowhere near Communist. It doesn't have a planned economy or a strong wealth redistribution (hell, there are almost no state-provided social services).
Right now it's in a classic Wild West Capitalism stage where you can do anything provided that you have enough money. And no, it doesn't end by itself - just look at hellholes like Nigeria.
In most countries, the government owns everything (or a bit of everything). The USA is one of the few countries with a pension program that's required by law to only buy government bonds for "investment". Had SS bought stock, and not bonds, it would have made enough to have never run out of money. And you'd not be able to brag about your ineffective government (the goal of every Republican isn't a small government, but an ineffective one). And the US government would "own" everything (or at least 0.05% of it), not unlike China.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
Nixon would not be considered even close to moderate or liberal. Get your facts right
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You actually think that China is a communist country. That's so cute.
I had not realized how naive posters on /. can be.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
China is a dictatorial country, a country ruled by an elite class of people, the moniker is fully irrelevant but the point stands: an oppressive government system, centrally planning everything caused massive deaths of tens of millions by being able to deliver only poverty and misery - everything that government can deliver.
Capitalism in a much freer market over the last 3-4 decades created enough wealth that people in China may be able to address some of the issues of pollution, which exist today specifically because of all the poverty that decades of centrally planned government oppression has created (and even if the pollution resulted in the last few decades of massive development, the preceding poverty and thus government oppression is to blame for this outcome).
You don't like the word 'Communist'? Well, the Chinese government explicitly calls themselves Communist, take up the naming conventions with them.
You can't handle the truth.
Well then, Chinese well water is, well, pretty un-well.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Boiling water to make tea may well kill bacteria and viruses but it doesn't do much for chemical pollution.
The point doesn't still stand. You are confused. Yes, they call themselves communist, but that doesn't make it the case. I guess you think North Korea is a democracy and a republic if all it takes is a name.
In economics, he wasn't conservative. He instituted wage and price controls to stop inflation after the fed. budget dumped a lot of extra money through deficit spending into the money supply. That was because of the Vietnam war and the great society programs. It was peanuts by today's standards but back then in a much smaller economy, it was significant. And then he took them off again after it became clear they only made the problems worse.
Helping to open up China wasn't a conservative idea either. He was mainly attempting to play it off the Soviet Union even though the two could not be considered allies at that time.
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.
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 */
I take it you are a big specialist on China and its government over the last century? What, in your not so humble opinion makes Chinese form of government not a Communist State? Before capitalism of the last few decades, over a billion people was in poverty due to an authoritarian system that prevented people from private enterprise. Not Communist? People who genuinely held anti capitalist views, as they were marching together into more poverty while their meager possessions were taken from them under the banner of 'from each, based on his ability to each based on his need', not Communist? They had all of the Communist rhetoric and all of the Communist poverty throughout except for the elite. So your position is: their government did not share in their misery, so they were not Communist. I say they were Communist regardless of what you believe, you are regurgitating other people's regurgitated points on how something you do not like not being something you aspire to simply because it does not fall into your very neat and tight view of such things.
They were not Marxist, that would require abolition of the State power and actual cooperation on Communist ideas, instead they were oppressed into Communism -sharing the misery and poverty and not letting the non elite normal people to improve their lives by working as individuals and not a collective, they were Communist more than you can imagine or understand.
You can't handle the truth.
Well water, surface water, brackish water, salt water, waste water and water under the influence of surface water is all water that can be treated to become potable water. How much are you willing to spend? If you really want to spend money, go to the level of purity needed for some industrial applications like chip manufacturing. The numerical grades given do not mean anything as we do not know what the standard is that the grades are being compared to.
Passionately Indifferent
They explicitly call the government 'socialist' (she hui) and the ruling party is Communist (gong chan). But as you say, the name is irrelevant, the results speak for themselves.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
So your statement is, "Both major parties are at fault, but we'll blame just one because it fits my narrative."
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
To be fair, in most if not all of those wells the Arsenic is 100% natural. Here in the SouthWest every now and then we get a story about land reclamation, and how the company putting the land back to it's natural state has to buy thousands of pounds of arsenic to till in with the reclamation soil to get the chemistry right for native plants. Its 100% natural, and why we have names like "Arsenic Springs".
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.
That deal with CHina is just up the road with conservatives. Basically, he wanted to push the soviets to the sideline and make china become a more normal nation. Nothing liberal in that.
Mostly agree about Nixon's economics. Oddly, it is the conservatives that speak out against controls, while regularly putting them on. For example, after the conservatives caused the great depression, they were the ones that also pushed for many of the remedies that gave us 50 years of decent economy and kept us out of trouble. Sherman anti-trust laws was from GOP. Heck, it was Lincoln that really pushed taxes, along with the gov helping railroads and coal companies. All of which today would be seen as liberal.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
a well is a well.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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.
100% natural arsenic? That's a good thing so it's OK to drink, right?
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.
So really what you're saying is both parties are really the same party and they are evil. Yes.
So a 5 foot deep "well" 20 feet from the ocean that pulls in seawater that seeps through the sand is "well water" in your definition, because it's from a well? You have an odd and quite useless definition of well if anything someone calls a "well" is a well.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
Learn to love Alaska
You seem to be running with a fixed definition for party ideology based on today's standards. The republican party under Lincoln is not at all the same as today's. Shoot, the modern Republican party doesn't even represent the same geographic regions as Lincoln's. It represents almost the exact opposite in fact.
Also, that Washington post article you posted along with your claim that Nixon wasnt a moderate has nothing to do with Nixon. It's an article about Obama. Just because it has Nixon's name in it a single time doesnt mean it's about him.
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Also, that Washington post article you posted along with your claim that Nixon wasnt a moderate has nothing to do with Nixon. It's an article about Obama. Just because it has Nixon's name in it a single time doesnt mean it's about him.
Perhaps before talking about what an article does and does not talk about, you should try reading it? Half way down the page we have a pretty liberal vs conservative graphic which shows that indeed, Nixon was conservative!
https://img.washingtonpost.com...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Oh yes, wonderfull graph, that. If it's in a graph it has to be right. Those highly meaningfull numbers on the left that arent broken down at all mean that Nixon was over .9 more conservative than LBJ!
There's no explenation as to why these numbers are what they are and the article you implied you read even says that the scores are kind of arbitrary. Furthermore, labeling Clinton that far to the Left? What the heck did he ever do during his presidency that puts him that far to the Left? I'm not saying Nixon wasnt conservative in many ways, I'm only refuting your "uber Republican" label for the man who founded the EPA.
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