Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five percent of the surface water in China is so contaminated that it can’t even be used for industrial purposes. The sad thing about that figure is, while twenty-five percent is that contaminated, less than half of the total supply available is fit for human consumption. This data came from an environment watchdog this past Monday.

Inspectors in China have been painstakingly testing water samples from the major rivers and lakes for the first half of this year, and have proclaimed that just 49.3 percent of the water would be safe for human consumption. This number is actually up from the 48 percent of last year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection declared in a public notice from their website.

China has six grades they use for classifying their water supplies, with the first three grades being considered safe for human use, such as drinking and bathing.

Another 24.6 percent of the water supply was said to have fallen in categories four and five, which is only good for industrial or agricultural use. This leaves a total of 24.3 percent in category six, which is not suitable for any use at all.

This is an absolute appalling state of affairs, and despite tougher regulations being implemented over the past 10 years, the ministry is still struggling to keep tabs on thousands of paper mills, cement factories, and chemical plants which are pumping their industrial waste right into the water supplies of the country.

This is a serious problem, but it seems like it will be quite some time before they get a handle on it.