News from The First National Drinking Water Source Protection Work Conference held in Shenyang, Liaoning in northeast China that about 20% of the drinking water sources for urban residents in China are not up to national standards and this affects the lives of more than 90 million people.
Zhang Lijun, the vice minister of China's Ministry of Environmental Protection, stressed at the conference that it is a premier task to effectively reduce the entry of pollutants into drinking water sources, to protect these drinking water sources, and regions at all levels of the country should rigorously check for high risk pollutants with particular focus on heavy metals.
It was also said that the environmental situation drinking water is still very poor in China today with many substandard drinking water sources.