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China environment communique exposes poor air, groundwater quality

Xinhua, June 4, 2015 Adjust font size:

China's Ministry of Environmental Protection on Thursday released its 2014 Environment Condition Communique, revealing serious air and groundwater pollution.

Only 16 of the 161 major Chinese cities subject to air quality monitoring met the national standard for clean air in 2014, statistics from the communique showed.

The other 145 cities, or more than 90 percent of the total, failed to meet the new standard, which was implemented in 2013 and includes a PM2.5 index for monitoring airborne particles measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter.

Authorities observed precipitation in 470 cities and detected acid rain in 29.8 percent of them last year, according to the communique.

Authorities also conducted groundwater quality tests at 4,896 monitoring points. Results showed that only 10.8 percent of the monitored sites had "excellent" water quality, while 61.5 percent of them had "poor" or "extremely poor" water quality.

The communique also showed that the quality of 96.2 percent of the nation's drinking water met standards. Endi