Blog 8: If You Think China's Air Is Bad, You Should See The Water

China's extraordinary economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization, coupled with inadequate investment in basic water supply and treatment infrastructure, have resulted in widespread water pollution. In China today approximately 700 million people--over half the population--consume drinking water contaminated with levels of animal and human excreta that exceed maximum permissible levels. It's a new problem, but the causes – waterway pollution and failures to manage rivers across administrative boundaries and government departments – are old complaints

Behind the thousands of dead pigs floating down the Huangpu River, there lies a murky tale of waterway pollution and river management failure. The pigs are believed to have floated downstream from Shaoxing, in the neighboring province of Zhejiang.

There is an old saying in Chinese culture that the appearance of a fat pig at the front door augurs abundance and good fortune. The sight of a bloated one floating dead down the nearest river portends something else entirely. In the past two weeks, more than 16,000 dead pigs have been fished out of the Huangpu River, near Shanghai, and its tributaries. Outraged Chinese citizens have decried government negligence of the environment, flooding online forums with photos of riverbanks dotted with puce-colored carcasses. And there have been a recent report of 1,000 ducks found dead in this same river.

Seeing as ducks are the primary host and pigs are the intermediary host for H1N1 and SARS, and that China is clearly the foci for these variants emergence, kind of worrisome they have not come out with a regional health warning, especially as we are directly in the line of migratory birds that will be returning from that route this summer. I wonder when the Chinese government is going to admit they have an outbreak.

If it’s not one problem, it’s another with this country. At the rate that they are going, they will wipe themselves out in the next century.

http://article.wn.com/view/2013/03/25/Chinas_deadly_water_problem/#/related_news

Ryan Lindquist

April 5, 2013

1:25 PM