Toxic algae pose new health scare in China

Source: AFP

Toxic algae pose new health scare in China


BEIJING (AFP) - Two of China's biggest lakes are under renewed attack from toxic algae that destroy plant and fish life and threaten humans in the country's latest pollution scare, state media reported on Sunday.

New satellite pictures of eastern China show the blue-green foul-smelling algae spreading in Taihu and Chaohu lakes, the Workers Daily newspaper said.

The toxic algae scare in Lake Taihu has already triggered government panic and forced residents of nearby Wuxi city in Jiangsu province to turn off contaminated tapwater supplies. Scientists said that algae was still infecting Lake Taihu and had spread to Chaohu Lake in neighbouring Anhui province, where 40 square kilometres (15 square miles) of its surface were covered by the green slime, the newspaper said.

Local government officials were monitoring water quality "by the hour" in the lake, Zhang Bangguo, Anhui province. Environmental Protection Agency chief engineer was quoted as saying, describing the situation as "grave."

Last Tuesday the algae scare in Lake Taihu triggered a demand for action from Premier Wen Jiabao, who was quoted in the media as describing it as a pollution "wake-up call." More than 70 percent of China's waterways and 90 percent of its underground water are contaminated by pollution, according to government figures.

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Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070617/sc_afp/chinaenvironmentpollutionwater_070617111628

when they demand the same things we demand.

for its citizens...

Hey the Chinese people can tell their leaders they want the sewers (rivers) cleaned up. The Chinese have an enormous treasury. ENORMOUS! They can clean up the air problem there too.

i'm confident we were way ahead of them in the matter of toxic algae, didn't we have a similar outbreak over a decade ago, i remember reading the story of the scientist who was severely brain damaged...also the toxic algae has been killing the eagles in south carolina for quite some while now


toxic algae is not a problem that just affects china

clean air and water acts... unfortunately they have been watered down, no pun intended.

which is a cheap way to import water, too.

China doesn't have enough water, and paving over land for factories that make more junk further limits the amount of arable land. The rain forests are the lungs of the planet, and now they have to feed a huge population that can't feed itself.

Many Chinese do not trust the safety of their food supply. Three hundred million (a number that is about the same as the U.S. population) gets food poisoning each year.

The coal plants that are being built at a rate of one every week further compromise land. I read that ten percent of the land in China is polluted by lead, which is a byproduct of coal plants.

Los Angeles gets about a quarter of its smog from China. It's one world, folks. Buy things that you need that are made locally. Read the labels. If the food item I am buying at a store that sells frozen vegetables from China doesn't list a country of origin, I don't buy it. I did get fooled by peanuts that sneak through Canada and labeled "organic" and "manufactured in Canada." Beware of peanuts of unknown origin.

http://ffas.usda.gov/itp/wto/texas/hunter.html

"China is now the largest producer of peanuts in the world, and while only a small quantity of their peanuts can enter the U.S. annually, instead they enter through other countries such as Canada. In countries like Canada, these Chinese peanuts are then made into butter and/or paste, as was mentioned earlier, and are entering the U.S. in expanding quantities. China has also recently become a major world supplier in a market that has become driven by cash needs, with little or no consideration for quality or market price. The U.S. peanut-producing industry has been damaged as a result of the U.S. failing to ensure strict rules of origin when the Canadian Free Trade and North American Free Trade Agreements were negotiated.

dinoflagellates and was poisoned by them. At least I assume you are talking about Dr. JoAnn Burkholder. She's a nice person and it's a shame that her health suffered so. I met her at a conference and we corresponded occasionally for a couple of years. She was having health problems then but evidently got much worse later. The same toxic dinoflagellates were discovered in Virginia, too. Pfisteria is the genus name and as I recall, there were two species that she and another biologist at NC State discovered. I don't remember the other biologist's name, never met him.

i may have been thinking of glasgow, who lost even the ability to read, but you are right, this is the story i'm thinking of

what a nightmare!

It has an army it will reach out to get water and lands

Change is in the air and most of China will be under water
most of China ...its coming

Also, in addition to the front page story on the New York Times about the anti-freeze brokered by a Chinese government export agency that has keep killing children, I noted the product recalls in our local paper--most were products that had lead in them that were intended for children and it seems that all have come from China.

China makes most of the world's vitamins and supplements, and I'm sure that there is a huge profit in them, but can the companies that sell them really guarantee their safety?

n/t