Benjamin Haas - Shanghai water supply hit by 100-tonne wave of garbage // Smog refugees flee Chinese cities as 'airpocalypse' blights half a billion
Medical waste, broken
bottles and household trash are some of the items found in more than 100 tonnes
of garbage salvaged near a drinking water reservoir in Shanghai. The suspected culprits
are two ships that have been dumping
waste upstream in the Yangtze river. It has then flowed downstream to
the reservoir on Shanghai’s Chongming
island which is also home to 700,000 people. The reservoir at the
mouth of the river is one of the four main sources of drinking water for the
country’s largest city, according to local media.
China has struggled
with air, soil and water pollution for years during its economic boom, with
officials often protecting industry and silencing citizens that complain.
China’s cities are often blanketed in toxic smog, while earlier this year more
than 80% of water wells used by farms, factories and rural households was found
to be unsafe
for drinking because of pollution.
Officials dispatched
more than 40 workers to clean up the mess, but the area around the reservoir
will take about two weeks to clear, the Shanghai Daily reported. Shanghai’s
water authority claims supplies are still safe to drink, but has stopped the
flow coming in while it continues testing, the paper said. Videos circulating on
social media showed beaches and wetlands covered in a rainbow of plastic bags. There’s
enough trash to cover several football fields,” a local resident can be heard
saying in one video. Catheter bags and used IV sacks are pulled from the water,
and in some places only a sea of trash can be seen, completely obscuring the
river water. “This is so sad, just
humanity digging its own grave,” one commenter on Twitter-like Sina Weibo said.
Needles and medical
tubes were found in the trash, which has been washing ashore since 5 November.
Despite cleanup efforts, a new wave of garbage inundated the island again this
week. Earlier this year more than 500 students developed nosebleeds, rashes and
illnesses, some as severe
as leukaemia, in what local media linked to illegal toxic dumping by
chemical factories.
Although parents
complained for months, local officials ignored their claims and disputed any
connection despite levels of chlorobenzene, a highly toxic
solvent that
causes damage to the liver, kidney and nervous system, nearly 100,000 times
above the safe limit. The country’s air pollution has been shown to contribute
to more than 1 million deaths a year, linked to about a third of deaths in
China’s major cities.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/23/shanghai-water-supply-hit-by-100-tonne-wave-of-garbage
