13 striking photos that show how polluted China's water has become
The red river in Wenzhou is just one example of the water pollution that has been running rampant in China for years.
More than half of China's population doesn't have access to safe drinking water. Almost two-thirds of China's rural population use water contaminated by human and industrial waste.
China is home to 20% of the world's population and contains about 7% of the world's fresh water.
Source: The New York Times
Pollution of the water and air has short and far-reaching effects. The pollution is so bad that it even affects the animals in the water. Fish, an important source of food for many, are also at risk.
Environmentalist Ma Jun told Voice of America, "I think the next 20 years will be quite critical. The government needs to make efforts to reduce pollution to provide a safe and healthy environment for this generation."
Source: Voice of America
China's economy is the second largest in the world, and it's getting larger. With that growth comes more factories, where a majority of the pollution comes from.
With that increase in industrialization comes both pollution in the form of runoff or contamination, but also in major accidents, such as large leaks or spills. Here, workers try to clean up after an oil spill in Dalian Port, Liaoning province in 2010.
In 2015, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection issued a report that said two-thirds of groundwater and one-third of surface water was unsafe for human contact.
Source: IB Times
278 of China's cities — nearly 80% — do not have any sewage treatment facilities.
Source: factsanddetails.com
In 2013, almost 11,000 dead pigs were found floating in the Huangpu River near Shanghai, assumed to be dumped from farms upstream.
Polluted water has been linked to many communicable and dangerous diseases, many of them that are deadly or chronic. Polluted drinking water has been reported to be the cause of at least 14% of all digestive cancers in China.
The Yellow River and the Yangtze River are the water sources that have been affected the most, which is a huge problem because they are China's two major rivers, flowing consistently from east to west.
The Chinese government has made pollution a criminal act, sending violators to jail and issuing fines in an effort to clean up the insanely polluted waters.
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