Over 80 Percent of China's Well Water Is Polluted (voanews.com) 88
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... (Score:1)
http://www.the-american-intere... [the-americ...terest.com]
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2... [huffingtonpost.ca]
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100% natural arsenic? That's a good thing so it's OK to drink, right?
Re:I wonder how the USA would rate... (Score:5, Informative)
""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?
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a well is a well.
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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.
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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.
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Re:I wonder how the USA would rate... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Cognitive dissonance doesn't change the facts (Score:2)
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
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Re:I wonder how the USA would rate... (Score:4, Insightful)
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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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
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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 tro
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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 sing
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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... [washingtonpost.com]
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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
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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
Re:I wonder how the USA would rate... (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
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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.
Re:I wonder how the USA would rate... (Score:4, Funny)
You actually think that China is a communist country. That's so cute.
I had not realized how naive posters on /. can be.
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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 specifica
Re:I wonder how the USA would rate... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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 t
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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 ta
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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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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 go
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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 ov
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We like to pick on China and India and such, but the US has had burning rivers, and London had smog so thick Merry Poppi
Drink up! (Score:1)
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.
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Countries that treat their environment like a sewer should not be surprised to find their poor people eating (or drinking) shit.
FIFY
Pollution in China (Score:3)
Film at 11:00.
Re:Pollution in China (Score:5, Insightful)
There is widespread pollution in China. Film at 11:00.
I love to point to China when I hear about how the USA should gut it's reglatory systems. That's what we would be getting a repeat of where we were once.
It's not even wrong to think that when a system is designed to make money, that money won't be made in any manner possible.
Cleaning up after yourself costs money, and since it doesn't matter in six months, who the hell cares if you poison the water? There are plenty more countries with clean water to poison.
I'm still offering tours of what the coal mining companies did in the counties above mine. Land not fit to do anything but die on now. And that orange color in the water does not make it soda.
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I'm still offering tours of what the coal mining companies did in the counties above mine.
Do you drive there? Do you advertise these tours on the internet using power? And do you pay extra for your power to subsidise green initiatives?
Companies don't pollute, they provide a product that the market demands. YOU and I are the ones who are doing the polluting. We do this indirectly by preferring the cheapest garbage we can find which ultimately comes from a place where the cost of manufacturing is low due to .... lack of regulations.
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Regulating pollution by industry has been wildly successful in the US. There are still plenty of pollution events that one can point at, but the overall levels of air and water pollution have fallen at the same time that population has grown and standard of living has risen. The EPA deserves a great deal of credit for this fact. Canada's protections seem comparatively weak by comparison, but our population is so small enough and our land area so large that we get away with it.
I really have a hard time imagi
Re:Pollution in China (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm still offering tours of what the coal mining companies did in the counties above mine.
Do you drive there?
Usually
Do you advertise these tours on the internet using power?
Just on slashdot for people who bloviate about how regulations are evil. Whatever you are trying to prove, you are failing miserably.
Companies don't pollute, they provide a product that the market demands. YOU and I are the ones who are doing the polluting.
This is bizzare. So the profit motive doesn't come into play at all? These companies who in the late 1800's until the mid 1900's were run bereft of regulations, and after stripping off a section of coal, they either simply left it, or even better, declared bankruptcy. Then a close relative would start up a new business doing the same thing. After 7 years, rinse and repeat.
Back in the day, their largest customers were other companies, and consumerism hardly existed at all. They didn't have to clean up after themselves, and they didn't.
Some could be cleaned with biofuel scavanging (Score:2)
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.
Why capitalism must account for the environment (Score:4, Insightful)
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Boiling water to make tea may well kill bacteria and viruses but it doesn't do much for chemical pollution.
Sadly, this will continue because of Chinese gov. (Score:3)
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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 */
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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/diese
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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 p
Well, Well, Well (Score:2)
The cities don't see? (Score:2)
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.