Emissions from textile mills pollute Taihu lake

05 Jun '07

2 min read

The large-scale outbreak of Cyanobacteria in Taihu Lake has created huge difficulties for people in Wuxi City. It has brought back the alarming signs of ecological environment deterioration of Taihu Lake.

The long-term research results by China Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology show, the main reasons for the environment deterioration of this Lake include industrial pollution, expanded sources of agricultural pollution, urban sewage directly flowing into the lake and rapid expansion of aquaculture scale.

In the recent 20 years, Taihu Lake region has seen a rapid economic development. Since the late 1980s, chemical industry boosted, as the pillar industry of Taihu Lake region, large and small chemical enterprises in electroplating, printing and dyeing and other enterprises spreading all over the surrounding areas of Taihu Lake.

Currently, the junction water quality standards of 21 major rivers circling Taihu Lake only read 61.9 percent while that of 45 major rivers only score 53.3 percent.

The industrial pollution of Taihu Lake Basin has mainly concentrated in textile industry, chemical raw materials and chemical manufacturing, food industry and industries in other fields.

Chemical oxygen demand (COD) emissions of textile printing and dyeing industry are the largest, accounting for 61 percent of COD emissions of key industrial enterprises. Total phosphorus emissions account for 41 percent of key industrial enterprises, ammonia emissions of chemicals and chemical products industries account for 38 percent of key industrial enterprises and ammonia emissions from food industry account for 26 percent of key industrial enterprises.

With the speeding up transfer of the industry, some industrial enterprises with serious pollution and low technological content have transferred their production to rural areas, where the control system is relatively weak. Large amount of industrial pollution flows into Taihu Lake through surrounding river network, inflowing pollutants are larger then environment capacity, which has eventually led the large-scale outbreak of this Cyanobacteria.

Fire2fashion, News Desk - China

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