China's longest river "cancerous" with pollution

[AussieMark]

China's longest river "cancerous" with pollution

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's longest river is "cancerous" with pollution and rapidly dying, threatening drinking water supplies in 186 cities along its banks, state media said on Tuesday.

Chinese environmental experts fear worsening pollution could kill the Yangtze river within five years, Xinhua news agency said, calling for an urgent clean-up.

"Many officials think the pollution is nothing for the Yangtze," Xinhua quoted Yuan Aiguo, a professor with the China University of Geosciences, as saying.

"But the pollution is actually very serious," it added, warning that experts considered it 'cancerous'."

Industrial waste and sewage, agricultural pollution and shipping discharges were to blame for the river's declining health, experts said.

The river, the third longest in the world after the Nile and the Amazon, runs from remote far west Qinghai and Tibet through 186 cities including Chongqing, Wuhan and Nanjing and empties into the sea at Shanghai.

It absorbs more than 40 percent of the country's waste water, 80 percent is untreated, said Lu Jianjian, from East China Normal University.

"As the river is the only source of drinking water in Shanghai, it has been a great challenge for Shanghai to get clean water," Xinhua quoted him as saying.

China is facing a severe water crisis -- 300 million people do not have access to drinkable water -- and the government has been spending heavily to clean major waterways like the Yellow, Huaihe and Yangtze rivers.

But those clean-up campaigns have made limited progress because of spotty regional enforcement. Toxic spills are common, the worst recently being in the Songhua river in the northeast which led to the taps of Harbin being turned off for days.

Despite immediate concerns for the cities along its banks, the Yangtze, along with the Yellow river, is earmarked for China's ambitious South-North water diversion scheme -- a plan to pump water from southern waterways to the parched north.

But environmentalists fear that unless local governments and industries start getting serious about cutting pollution, most of the water shipped north will not be fit to drink.

Most of the Yellow River, the second-longest in China and the cradle of early Chinese civilization, is so polluted it is not safe for drinking or swimming, Xinhua news agency said in May last year.

[wxmann_91]

Unfortunately that's what happens when you cram so many people into such a small area, the pollution's incredible, literally everywhere.

[Janice]

I am surprised India and other over populated countries are not having the same problem.

[TexasStooge]

Unfortunately that's what happens when you cram so many people into such a small area, the pollution's incredible, literally everywhere.

That's true.

[gtalum]

Unfortunately that's what happens when you cram so many people into such a small area, the pollution's incredible, literally everywhere.

China's not a small country. It's only a bit smaller than the US, and it's actually less densely populated than many other countries.

It's more a factor of a lack of environmental regulation. China is what the US would loook like if there were no balance to corporate greed.

[AussieMark]

china has over a billion people tho

[gtalum]

china has over a billion people tho

But as noted, there are several countries that are both more densely populated and less polluted.

[coriolis]

That's how the rivers were in the US in the 1950's and 1960's. Once their true costs of industrialism catch up with them, their advantage in labor costs will diminish. They may follow our lead into a post industrial economy.

[wxmann_91]

Unfortunately that's what happens when you cram so many people into such a small area, the pollution's incredible, literally everywhere.

China's not a small country. It's only a bit smaller than the US, and it's actually less densely populated than many other countries.

It's more a factor of a lack of environmental regulation. China is what the US would loook like if there were no balance to corporate greed.

90% of the population is packed in the eastern half of the country. With the industrialization that's going on there, this situation is likely to only get worse.

[wxmann_91]

china has over a billion people tho

But as noted, there are several countries that are both more densely populated and less polluted.

But are less industrialized.

[gtalum]

Japan isn't less industrialized.