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Report suggests tap water in China much worse than imagined
Source: Xinhua |
May 9, 2012, Wednesday
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Online Edition
Online Edition
Chinese are accustomed to boiling tap water before drinking it because they think this can make the water clean, but an investigative report publicized Monday casts doubt on that belief.
Century Weekly, a magazine under Caixin Media, reported Monday in its cover story that the water quality of at least 1,000 tap water providers in cities is disqualified, citing Song Lanhe, chief engineer of the Urban Water Quality Monitoring Center under the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.
Song gave the comment based on a drinking water survey conducted by the center in 2009, the largest of its kind in more than a decade.
"Among more than 4,000 water plants we surveyed, we found the water provided by over 1,000 plants was disqualified," said Song, who added the quality of urban tap water has not improved much since the survey.
The ministry has so far not released results of the survey. The report said this indicated that the underlying truth might be much uglier.
"I am not authorized to tell you the exact figure (of tap water's qualification rate)," Song said.
The controversial report went further, saying that the figure might be around only 50 percent, but the report failed to name the sources who revealed the information.
Online tweets on the country's leading website portal sina.com.cn yesterday criticized the country's inability to provide safe water for its people and many disappointed with and worried about the disqualified tap water that could lead to serious diseases due to high CODmn and untreated remnants of heavy metals in the water.
CODmn is an index used to gauge the amounts of organic compounds in the water.
A netizen nicknamed Meteor Popcorn tweeted that he had known that tap water was directly drinkable in some foreign countries since he was very young, however, tap water in parts of China could cause serious disease because some chemical companies are located along the upper reaches of the country's major rivers such as the Yangtze.
Wang Zhansheng, a Tsinghua University professor, said the accumulation of organic compounds in human bodies could lead to cancer and even mutations at worst. The report said the survey has shown that the disqualified tap water was mainly because of high CODmn.
Meanwhile, incidents of water pollution by heavy metals are not rare in the country in its pursuit for fast industrial and economic growth. On Jan. 15, cadmium contamination was detected on the Longjiang River in south China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region after fish died in large numbers. The river is an upstream tributary of the Liujiang River, which runs through Liuzhou, a city with 1.5 million permanent residents.
With China's economic boom over the years, the underlying truth is that many water sources are heavily polluted. The report said that simple water treatment methods used in the past could no longer produce safe drinking water.
Century Weekly, a magazine under Caixin Media, reported Monday in its cover story that the water quality of at least 1,000 tap water providers in cities is disqualified, citing Song Lanhe, chief engineer of the Urban Water Quality Monitoring Center under the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.
Song gave the comment based on a drinking water survey conducted by the center in 2009, the largest of its kind in more than a decade.
"Among more than 4,000 water plants we surveyed, we found the water provided by over 1,000 plants was disqualified," said Song, who added the quality of urban tap water has not improved much since the survey.
The ministry has so far not released results of the survey. The report said this indicated that the underlying truth might be much uglier.
"I am not authorized to tell you the exact figure (of tap water's qualification rate)," Song said.
The controversial report went further, saying that the figure might be around only 50 percent, but the report failed to name the sources who revealed the information.
Online tweets on the country's leading website portal sina.com.cn yesterday criticized the country's inability to provide safe water for its people and many disappointed with and worried about the disqualified tap water that could lead to serious diseases due to high CODmn and untreated remnants of heavy metals in the water.
CODmn is an index used to gauge the amounts of organic compounds in the water.
A netizen nicknamed Meteor Popcorn tweeted that he had known that tap water was directly drinkable in some foreign countries since he was very young, however, tap water in parts of China could cause serious disease because some chemical companies are located along the upper reaches of the country's major rivers such as the Yangtze.
Wang Zhansheng, a Tsinghua University professor, said the accumulation of organic compounds in human bodies could lead to cancer and even mutations at worst. The report said the survey has shown that the disqualified tap water was mainly because of high CODmn.
Meanwhile, incidents of water pollution by heavy metals are not rare in the country in its pursuit for fast industrial and economic growth. On Jan. 15, cadmium contamination was detected on the Longjiang River in south China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region after fish died in large numbers. The river is an upstream tributary of the Liujiang River, which runs through Liuzhou, a city with 1.5 million permanent residents.
With China's economic boom over the years, the underlying truth is that many water sources are heavily polluted. The report said that simple water treatment methods used in the past could no longer produce safe drinking water.
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