Understanding the Staggering Drinking Water Crisis in China
When in China, you have to do as the natives do, and that means boiling tap water before you can drink it. Though some hotels and all restaurants offer boiled water to their guests, and you can buy bottled water, anything that just runs from a faucet is not safe to drink. Although the water is fine to wash in, it is recommended that not one of the water from the shower head be ingested for fear it will make you sick. Experts also say that tourists should use bottled water to brush their gnashers. That is how lethal the local water is. There are definitely major and far-ranging water pollution in China.
The lakes, streams, and groundwater in China have all become terribly polluted by business and agricultural wastes and spills. All of this pollution joined with China’s high population and the manymillions of people who live in rural areas has created a problem that the Chinese government is working to deaden. Additionally, China does not have adequate natural sources of clean water, and of the water they do have, 70% is so polluted that it’s considered unsuitable for human contact.
Three and a half million tons of sewage is produced in China each day. This means that the country should have at least 10,000 sewage treatment plants in operation to treat even half that much. Unfortunately, they have far less than this number operating at this time. This means that scores of rustic Chinese drink water poisoned with human and animal waste and filth. Even in the nations’s major cities, the municipal water pollution level is much higher than Fed standards permit.
The biggest cash crop produced in China has always been rice which is grown in paddies crammed with water. With most of the available water being poisonous, people are disinclined to eat rice which could have been produced in unsafe water. This is devastating to the nation’s income that depends heavily on rice production. Folk in China eat the rice and drink the water, and these things are answerable for outbreaks of heavy illnesses and other health issues.
Although central authority agencies are tightening commercial waste standards as well as those ruling safe drinking water, the problem of water pollution has gotten so out of hand that it will take years and billions of dollars to get it back in hand and can only be corrected by implementing solutions like an emergency water treatment system through the use of diatomaceous earth filters.
Tags: China, Chinese drinking water, clean drinking water in China, drinking water, water pollution