The Global Drain: Why China's Water Pollution Problems Should Matter to the Rest of the World

Chinese and international media have recently reported that more than 80% of the shallow groundwater in large parts of northern China is affected by pollution, rendering it unusable for drinking without treatment.This is by no means the first such report; in 2013, China's largest ever national groundwater quality survey estimated that more than half of the nation's total groundwater resource, including shallow and deep aquifers, was polluted to some degree. The sources of pollution include industrial waste and agricultural chemical runoff, which enter shallow aquifers predominantly by seepage from the surface, although there is also evidence of illegal waste injection directly underground using "pollution disposal wells." In both of these widely publicized groundwater quality surveys the data used to determine the overall prevalence of pollution came from thousands of government monitoring wells installed around the country: a large sample size that ensures the data are statistically significant over a wide range of geographic areas. These data and other recent reports indicate that no region of China is unaffected by serious groundwater pollution. The situation is also dire with respect to surface water quality, with a large proportion of monitored rivers and lakes recently failing to meet water quality standards.