Good point, biodegradable waste is an improvement.

waste and bacteria from land animals differ greatly to that from fish.

Sure some thungs are different (species specific virus strains)...but I doubt you can see them post treatment.

Gmol, you've got a lot of faith in the treatment and testing regime. You should see what the local governance sez about the air quality and compare that to what our consulate there sez ( for some _utterly inexplicable_ reason they run their own air quality monitoring station )

Go to the bathroom? Don't forget your onion when you go into town grandpa.

It'd be difficult to lie here. What are you supposing about the water that is worse? Macroscopic stuff is filtered....no appreciable change in metal concrntration....bacteria or worms? Standard water treatment does a good job there...quite different from air pollution standards...

I don't want to sound like I think disposing of a bunch of animals directly in a river (with an unknown reason) is a good idea...but it wouldn't surprise me if the water was safe to drink.

Well I kinda figured that since it's fucking China (whose record on environmentalism is without peer), the thousands of rotting pig carcasses in a major water source of an already horrifyingly polluted river was sweet icing on the cake.

Check the rationality on your Chinahate.
As far as I can tell people are drinking from that river, and you are suggestting that it is "horrifyingly polluted". Tell me exactly how .. heavy metals? Giardia?

I don't know what country you live in, but I urge some introspection on environmental record.

Yeah, let's read about that record:

http://news.discovery.com/earth/how-putrefying-pigs-pollute-wa ter-130314.htm

"Drinking straight from the Huangpu river could potentially be deadly, even without the thousands of pigs. Shanghai dumps millions of tons of sewage into the Huangpu every year."

Not the kind of "green" I'd hope for. The article also states that, yes, Shanghai has a filtration system, but it might not be able to handle 6,000 dead pigs. Relying on the government for accurate information on that wouldn't exactly be something I'd count on, given how filthy Bejing's air is, the toxic chemicals constantly being found in Chinese exports, etc.

They've improved by going to other technologies, sure, but only because they've got no other choice to meet demand without completely turning their cities into even bigger smog pits.

Gmol pines for the good old days when America used to be like this. I can remember when the river across town from where my cousin lived would catch fire in the summer. This is a true thing, I am afraid. I have read reports of this happening now in China.

That discovery article is horrible and written for the uncritical mind, I'll write a post later explaining it. Hint, no one has ever experienced hydrogen sulfide toxicity from water.

Look up a critical analysis on the Cuyahoga fire while you are at it as well.

Ok the article and how it is trying to trick you:

First, the river supplies 80% of water to Shanghai...if the treated water sin't safe to drink, lots of dead citizens isn't really an interest of the government. It is true, the raw water quality is a problem that China has been addressing for a while.

"Filtration systems might be able to handle a normal load of filth in the water of the Huangpu River, but 6,000 dead swine may be pushing it, Julian Fyfe, a water quality research consultant at the University of Technology Sydney"

Ok..so it's "pushing it", what does that even mean? Are just a few bacteria getting through? They can just *almost* afford the extra capacity needed


""If they are chlorinating heavily, which a lot of places may do, especially if they’ve got a very polluted water body to start with, then the effects could potentially be small,” Fyfe said."

Oh ok, so if they do something that lots of other people do, everything could be fine. Note, the article doesn't seem to state *what* exactly the muncipal water treatment plants in SHanghai do. Either it's borderline or just fine....informative.

"Putrefying pigs produce a wide variety of noxious and toxic chemicals. Aptly-named putrescine and cadaverine are two foul-smelling and toxic byproducts of decomposing flesh. Ammonia is also released, as is highly-toxic hydrogen sulfide gas. Considering the Huangpu flows through downtown Shanghai, the gas problem may pose health concerns as well."


Noxious and toxic are two different things, why jumble them together? Puterscine and cadaverine..ok..but *how much* is in the water? Does it get past the activated charcoal used in treatment?

"highly-toxic hydrogen sulfide gas"

This is what sinks the credibility of the whole article. Hydrogen sulfide is what makes farts smell (mostly), we are very sensitive to even small amounts of it. I think you would gag on the smell before you could drink enough water. Smell the water that people drink and take showers with in Iceland. Don't believe me? Ask the WHO:

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/en/hy drogensulfide.pdf

"Although oral toxicity data are lacking, it is unlikely that anyone could consume a harmful dose of hydrogen sulfide in drinking-water"

I can't imagine that even 6000 rotting carcasses could emit enough gas to poison anyone in the open air, toxic gas exposures are generally in the context of confined spaces.

"In addition to the byproducts of putrefaction, the pigs have added in their own disease to the filthy broth of the Huangpu. Xinhua news agency reported finding porcine circovirus in the river’s water. The virus isn’t known to cause disease in humans, according to the World Health Organization."

Ok, so good thing that this is a not a health threat (again, the concentration isn't noted).


"Drinking straight from the Huangpu river could potentially be deadly, even without the thousands of pigs. Shanghai dumps millions of tons of sewage into the Huangpu every year."

Ah, you can't be wrong here since drinking water from your top *could* be deadly (you could choke on it, for instance). I wouldn't want to drink water that has lots of untreated sewage flowing into it, not safe, but not deadly either (there are fish living in it after-all).

The article doesn't conclude with any statement on the safety of the treated water (a process that does a good job of dealing with all of this kind of thing every day).

I see all of this undeserved distrust towards the Chinese safety workers. Recall it is the Chinese government that discovered the melamine fiasco (and carried out executions as a result). The safety of the Shanghai water could easily be tested by labs outside the government (or outside China) by simply taking samples from the tap. If the government is lying, why would they tell a lie that could be so easily exposed?

Unless you are pointing out a specific concern with the water that hasn't been tested by a reputable agency, to not believe the results of a straightforward test (that could easily be replicated and validated) is to live in the same crazy conspiracy world that Alex Jones lives in. Examine your motives behind the knee-jerk "OH CHINA THEY COPY THINGS AND I DON'T TRUST THEM" response.

The truth of the matter can get muddled behind the environmental emotionalism. Look at the Erin Brokovich case...everyone thinks that the chromium caused cancer in Hinkley, similarly for Love Canal. To date, no one has shown that those communities did indeed suffer higher incidences of cancer than the larger populations they belong to.

my bad, "noxious" and "toxic" really aren't that different. For some reason I was thinking noxious related more to foul-smelling...it does not.

Ask any city that has had a Cryptosporidium outbreak if concentrating farm waste into drinking water and just cleaning it later is a wise idea. Milwaukee had 400,000 people get sick in 1993 from thoroughly treated and chlorinated Lake Michigan water because offal agricultural waste isn't the main problem, it's what GROWS in offal and agricultural waste that cannot be "processed" without building expensive ozonation plants.

Like I said above, I am not saying that dumping livestock or untreated sewage in athe river is safe or a good idea.

But if the treated water is looked at, deemed safe, and no one can produce evidence to the contrary; we obliged to believe the people that are saying it is safe.

You me the US?

Unclean spirits.

End Times a comin'.

Woooooooo