Breakneck economic development has turned China into one of the most polluted places on Earth, and the country’s ceramics industry is hardly blame free. In the ceramics capital of Foshan, entire factories that produce everything from glazed sculptures to porcelain tiles have been relocated in an effort to clear the air.
Read More…

go to permalink....

Yiyi Lu: China is now paying a heavy environmental price for its economic growth
Last September, the deputy director of a local Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in central China led a team to investigate the illegal discharge of waste water by a pharmaceutical factory. While the director was taking a sample of the waste water, he [...]

go to permalink....

It’s a reminder that China’s pollution problems aren’t just taking a devastating toll on China–they’re also affecting the rest of the world. Acid rain partly caused by Chinese sulfur emissions pours down on Japan and South Korea. Eighty percent of the East China Sea, one of the world’s largest fisheries, has become toxic, due to [...]

go to permalink....

Still, China’s hunger for natural resources is creating plenty of problems. Most of them, though, are in China, not abroad.
…
These are not just inconveniences, but also an enormous drag on society. Each year, they [pollution] make millions sick, cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, sap agricultural yields and so on. Pan Yue, a deputy [...]

go to permalink....

China’s environmental woes are mounting, and the country is fast becoming one of the leading polluters in the world. The situation continues to deteriorate because even when Beijing sets ambitious targets to protect the environment, local officials generally ignore them, preferring to concentrate on further advancing economic growth. Really improving the environment in China will [...]

go to permalink....

Pollution has turned part of a major river system in central China red and bubbly, forcing authorities to cut water supplies to 200,000 people and close schools, a government news agency reported Wednesday.
Read More…

go to permalink....

And don’t expect the government’s environmental watchdog to do much about it.
These days China’s environmental bureaucrats know how to talk the talk. They readily admit that pollution is poisoning the country’s water resources, air and soil. They acknowledge that carbon emissions are soaring. If only, they lament, the government would give them the means to [...]

go to permalink....

On the beaches of the Barents Sea, near the Russian city of Murmansk, ex-Soviet nuclear submarines lie rotting, like ticking ecological time bombs.The Russians have called on German experts to help prevent disaster.
Murmansk — the biggest city to the north of the Arctic Circle — is not exactly a pretty sight. The city, which during [...]

go to permalink....

Antibiotics in the meat, pesticide used as preservatives, mercury in the drinking water — Chinese author Zhou Qing says China’s food industry is poisoning the country in its greed for profit. If ordinary people knew, there would be a revolution, he adds. By Jochen Schönmann more…

Photo Gallery: The Dangers of Food in China
Rotten Meat Scandal: [...]

go to permalink....

Here in southern China, beneath the looming mountains of Fujian Province, lie dozens of enormous ponds filled with murky brown water and teeming with eels, shrimp and tilapia, much of it destined for markets in Japan and the West.
“Our waters here are filthy,” said Ye Chao, an eel and shrimp farmer who has 20 giant [...]

go to permalink....

GUANGZHOU, China — Every night, columns of hulking blue and red freight trucks invade China’s major cities with a reverberating roar of engines and dark clouds of diesel exhaust so thick it dims headlights.
By daybreak in this sprawling metropolis in southeastern China, residents near thoroughfares who leave their windows open overnight find their faces stiff [...]

go to permalink....

With the largest open-cast chromite ore mines in the world, India’s Sukinda valley endures significant pollution; 60 percent of the drinking water is contaminated with carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, affecting nearly 3 million people. Health officials say 85 percent (Times of India) of the population suffers from “pollution-induced” diseases and fatalities, such as gastrointestinal bleeding, tuberculosis, [...]

go to permalink....

For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China’s galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China — even as demand [...]

go to permalink....

The Chinese government has been accused of attempting to cover up nearly three quarters of a million deaths caused by rampant pollution.
Chinese officials reportedly tried to censor a World Bank document that found filthy air and water prematurely kill 750,000 people every year in China.
One woman told Sky News that people in her village are [...]

go to permalink....