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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.
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! --
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.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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".