River in China Turns Blood Red
A river in China’s northern province of Henan turned an eerie blood red color earlier this week following incidents of dumping at the hands of illegal factories.
The Jian River turned a spooky blood red after the propped up factories dumped their excess stock of red dye into a storm drain network in the city of Luoyang. The storm drain, used by the city, runs through the river.
The deep red color persisted for several days until police determined what was behind the startling color transformation.
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The two factories that were responsible for the dumping have been shut down and officials have dissembled machines to ensure that the makeshift plants will not prop up again.
The red river has spawned off jokes with an author from The Shanghai List suggesting that China’s ruling Communist Party might become inspired by the color of river and attempt to imitate it for future party celebrations.
However, not everyone is finding the humor in the red river, and others are raising concerns over the increasing environmental degradation in the world's most populated country.
The Chinese government has faced a plethora of issues over the last few years regarding public discontent over safety and environmental concerns. A majority of the country’s water supply is already severely tainted as a result of over-pollution and the country is facing a critical water shortage.
Water pollution and scarcity are just some of the environmental problems plaguing China, but rising air pollution and desertification are also raising the stakes of economic expansion in the rapidly developing country.
The Chinese population is becoming increasingly aware and concerned with how the Chinese economic miracle is impacting their health and the wellbeing of the environment.
“This miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace,” Pan Yue, a vice minister of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration, told the German magazine Spiegel back in 2005.
Yue candidly told the magazine that the costs of China’s development are becoming too much for the country to endure, citing that nearly 70 percent of Beijing’s cancer cases are a directly related to environmental problems. Beijing is China’s second most populated city and is home to 12.4 million people, according to U.N. estimates.
