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China's booming economy polluting sea
2007-08-04
China's booming economy is wreaking havoc on the nation's coastal waters, with sewers often spilling right into parts of the sea reserved for tourism or aqua-farming, state media said Saturday. This is the conclusion of a new survey of China's coastal environment over the first six months of the year, published by the State Oceanic Administration, the China Daily reported. According to the survey, 77 percent of 500 pollution outlets monitored by the administration discharge more pollutants than permitted, an 18 percent increase from the first half of 2006. Forty-two percent of the outlets monitored went into sea fishery farms, often carrying pollutants such as phosphate, ammonia and nitrogen, according to the paper. However, the paper took pains to emphasise that "it did not pose a threat to seafood security." A series of high-profile cases involving shoddy or dangerous Chinese exports has raised global concerns about the safety of products made in the country. The State Oceanic Administration said the report could actually underplay the extent of the problems, although it admitted it did not know for sure. "The surveillance is incomplete, in that it is not real-time, so the de facto seawater quality might be even worse than what the report says," said Li Xiaoming, director of the administration's environmental protection unit.
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