More than 60 pct of China's underground water rated unfit for human contact [View all]
Source: Reuters/Trust
BEIJING, June 4 (Reuters) - Nearly two-thirds of China's underground water, and a third of its surface water, were rated as unsuitable for direct human contact in 2014, the environment ministry said on Thursday.
China is waging a "war on pollution" to reverse some of the environmental damage done by more than three decades of breakneck growth, but one of its biggest and costliest challenges is tackling contaminated water supplies.
China classifies its water supplies into six grades, and just 3.4 percent of the 968 surface water sites monitored by the Ministry of Environmental Protection met the highest standard of "Grade I" last year.
In an annual environmental bulletin, the ministry said just 63.1 percent of the monitored sites were ranked in "Grade III" or above, so rendering them fit for human use.
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