Nearly 12% of Guangdong’s estuaries remain severely polluted and have not improved in the past year, Chen Guangrong, Deputy Director of Guangdong’s Environmental Protection Administration said. “The estuaries of the Shenzhen and Lianjiang rivers are the two main culprits,” Chen said. Pollutants were mainly domestic waste, measured by dissolved oxygen, ammonia nitrogen, total phosphorus and chemical oxygen demand (COD). The report said another 11.8% of estuaries were classified as class four or lightly polluted. Last year’s results do not show any improvement from 2010. Apart from estuaries, water in the Shenzhen, Lianjiang, Longgang and Pingshan rivers and the Xiao Dongjiang river’s Zhanjiang section was also classified as “heavily polluted”. The Guangdong Provincial Environmental Protection Administration set the end of the year as a deadline for the city governments of Shenzhen, Dongguan and Huizhou to improve the water quality in the Danshui and Shima rivers to Grade V, the minimum standard of usable water quality. According to a Guangdong environmental report,  the water quality of the Shenzhen river falls below Grade V, meaning it is heavily polluted, where it runs into the sea. “The water quality within Shenzhen and the quality of its drinking water sources both meet the standards,” said Chen Guangrong. “Most of the polluted rivers running into the Shenzhen river are short and they have a lower volume of water. In consequence, their ability for self-purification is limited,” said Huang Ping, Dean of Environmental Science at the School of Environmental Science and Engineering of Sun Yat-sen University. “At the same time, these rivers have to deal with a large amount of sewage.” The upper reaches of the Danshui and Shima rivers are both highly industrialized, and industrial sewage poses special problems. Chen said Guangdong will increase its daily sewage treatment capacity by 1 million metric tons this year and build another 1,000 kilometers of sewerage networks. “Our goal is a daily sewage treatment capacity of 22 million metric tons and 12,000 kilometers of sewerage networks by 2015,” Chen added. The water quality of rivers in eastern Guangdong is the worst, with 30% of it heavily polluted.

Air pollution will become the biggest health threat in China unless the government takes greater steps to monitor and publicize the dangers of smog, Zhong Nanshan, President of the China Medical Association and the country’s leading respiratory disease specialist, warned. Lung cancer and cardiovascular illnesses are already rising and could get worse in the future because of factory emissions, vehicle exhausts and cigarette smoke, he told the Guardian. The outspoken doctor – who won nationwide respect for revealing the cover-up of the SARS epidemic in 2002 – said the authorities are starting to learn the lessons of past health crises by being more transparent about the risks posed by contaminated air. Unless there is more openness, he said, public trust will be eroded. “Air pollution is getting worse and worse in China, but the government data showed it was getting better and better. People don’t believe that. Now we know it’s because they didn’t measure some pollutants,” said Zhong. “If the government neglects this matter, it will be the biggest health problem facing China.” Beijing and other major cities have experienced dire levels of air pollution for more than a decade, but the government has been reluctant to investigate and publicly disclose the medical consequences. Zhong said he has been concerned about the problem for 10 years, but his efforts to press for official data have met with silence. Until recently, the government did not include ozone and PM2.5 in its air quality index, even though these two pollutants pose the greatest risk to human health. Insiders say some cities quietly and selectively measured these pollutants for many years, but never made the results public. Scientific studies of this crucial public health issue have been notable by their absence, the Guardian reports.

China closed most of its lead-acid battery plants last year, and it vows to continue fighting heavy-metal pollution. The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said it checked nearly 2,000 lead-acid battery enterprises in 2011 and 81% of them were shut down for not meeting environmental standards, leaving only 315 in operation. “Although less than 20% of companies remained, the total productivity has reached 190 million kilowatt-hours, exceeding that of 2010,” Minister Zhou Shengxian said. Nine cases of lead poisoning were reported from January to August last year. “Preventing and controlling heavy-metal pollution, and strengthening supervision of such enterprises will remain as the most important part of this year’s environmental protection campaign,” Zhou said. “Stricter measures must be taken this year.” In January and February, four incidents of lead poisoning were reported in Guangdong, Henan and Guangxi. All provinces are also required to make public a list of miners and processors of heavy non-ferrous metal ores, leather tanning companies and plating companies by June 30, Zhou said.

Reducing fine particle pollution is the Beijing municipal government’s top priority for 2012, ahead of housing, health, and education, according to a local government report. It will be a long, tough battle, Du Shaozhong, Deputy Director of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, told China Daily. According to the Environmental Protection Bureau, the average reading of PM2.5 was between 70 and 80 micrograms per cubic meter in 2010. The city aims to cut the concentration down to 60 mg per cu m in 2015 and 50 mg in 2020. According to the Bureau, the city has witnessed a steady decline of PM2.5 concentration in recent years, from a yearly average reading of 100 mg to 110 mg per cubic meter in 2000 to 80-90 in 2005 and 70-80 in 2010. The city will have 30 PM2.5 air monitoring stations installed in the city’s 16 districts by the end of this year, and six of them will be set up in the near future. Du said the city is determined to scrap another 10,000 cars that produce heavy emissions out of the 5 million total in the city. According to the Bureau, 24.5% of the PM2.5 pollutants are coming from neighboring provinces. Beijing’s traffic authority has also launched a campaign targeting large trucks that fail to meet gas emission standards. Cargo trucks are to blame for 33% of nitric oxide emissions in the city and account for a majority of fine particle emission by vehicles. Trucks that fail to meet the emission standard will not be given access to the city. The capital will plant more than 13,000 hectares of trees this year, starting along the sixth ring road and covering 14 districts, as part of efforts to tackle heavy pollution. In order to reduce levels of PM2.5, the city plans to plant about 66,000 hectares of forest around the city, with the first 20% to be planted this year.

Up to 40% of China’s rivers were seriously polluted last year after 75 billion tons of sewage and waste water were discharged. Water shortages, serious river pollution and a deterioration in the aquatic ecology in 2011 were described as “quite outstanding,” and could threaten the country’s sustainable growth, Hu Siyi, Vice Minister at the Ministry of Water Resources, told a press conference in Beijing. China consumes more than 600 billion cubic meters of water a year, or about three-quarters of its exploitable water resources. Per capita water resources amount to only 2,100 cubic meters annually, or about 28% of the world’s average. About two-thirds of Chinese cities are “water-needy,” he said, while nearly 300 million rural residents lack access to safe drinking water. Zhou Xuewen, Director of the Ministry’s Planning Department, said a lot of water was wasted in agriculture, an industry which uses 60% of China’s water. Vice Minister Hu said that about 20% of rivers were so polluted their water quality was rated too toxic even to come into contact with. “With the rapid development of the country’s heavy industry, a large number of chemical plants have been built along the Yangtze river and near some drinking water resources that have posed great threats to water safety,” Hu said. The Chinese government unveiled a guideline to regulate the use of water under “the strictest criteria,” capping the maximum volume of water use at 700 billion cubic meters by the end of 2030. The government plans to invest CNY4 trillion in water conservation projects over the next 10 years, of which CNY1.8 trillion will be spent during the 2011-2015 period, the Shanghai Daily reports. A shortage of water quality monitoring stations is hindering China’s ability to mitigate damage done by chemical spills in the nation’s waterways, Vice Minister Hu said according to the China Daily. “At this time, government authorities cannot notice every accident in a timely manner because of the limited number of water quality monitoring sites across the country. In some areas, monitoring is done only once a month,” he said.