China says air pollution worsening

Yahoo News 27 Jul 10;

BEIJING (AFP) – China's air pollution increased this year for the first time since 2005, the environmental protection ministry has said, due to sandstorms, a rise in construction and industrial projects, and more cars.

The ministry found that the number of "good air quality days" in 113 major cities across the nation had dropped 0.3 percentage points in the first six months of the year compared with the same time last year.

These cities had not recorded a fall in the number of good air quality days since 2005, Tao Detian, spokesman for the ministry, said in a statement on its website dated Monday.

The level of inhalable particles, a major air pollution index, was also up during that time in those cities for the first time since 2005, Tao said, blaming the deterioration in air quality on severe spring sandstorms.

"More construction and industrial projects that started this year due to economic recovery and the rapid increase in automobiles should also be blamed," Chai Fahe, vice head of the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, told the China Daily newspaper.

The ministry also found that more than a quarter of surface water in China was contaminated, and fit only for industrial or agricultural use.

Acid rain was also a problem in the first half of the year -- out of 443 cities the ministry monitored, 189 suffered from the harmful precipitation.

And in eight cities, including a district of Shanghai, the rain that fell for the first six months was constantly acid, the statement said.

Tao said that despite some improvements, China still faced a "grim" situation in fighting pollution.

China has some of the world's worst water and air pollution after rapid industrialisation over the last 30 years triggered widespread environmental damage.

A report published in March by the London-based medical journal The Lancet said air pollution in the Asian nation was widely to blame for 1.3 million premature deaths a year from respiratory disease.

Pollution Makes Quarter Of China Water Unusable: Ministry
David Stanway Reuters 27 Jul 10;

Almost a quarter of China's surface water remains so polluted that it is unfit even for industrial use, while less than half of total supplies are drinkable, data from the environment watchdog showed on Monday.

Inspectors from China's Ministry of Environmental Protection tested water samples from the country's major rivers and lakes in the first half of the year and declared just 49.3 percent to be safe for drinking, up from 48 percent last year, the ministry said in a notice posted on its website (www.mep.gov.cn).

China classifies its water supplies using six grades, with the first three grades considered safe for drinking and bathing.

Another 26.4 percent was said to be categories IV and V -- fit only for use in industry and agriculture -- leaving a total of 24.3 percent in category VI and unfit for any purpose.

Despite tougher regulations over the last decade, the ministry has struggled to rein in the thousands of small paper mills, cement factories and chemical plants discharging industrial waste directly into the country's waterways, and the overuse of fertilizers has also left large sections of China's lakes and rivers choking with algae.

The ministry said there were noticeable improvements in air quality throughout the country's cities in the first half of 2010, with sulphur dioxide emissions declining 30.2 percent compared to last year.

Airborne particulate matter in China's cities fell 12.1 percent and nitrogen dioxide declined 5 percent, the ministry said.

However, 189 out of 443 cities monitored suffered from acid rain in the first half of the year.

(Editing by Miral Fahmy)