China adopted a new standard Sunday for tap water quality to better protect its population against a series of hidden dangers, state media said. "In some of China's cities, water supply has been contaminated and residents are threatened with unsafe water," Zhang Chengyu, an official with the Ministry of Health, told the Xinhua news agency.
The current standard, issued in 1985, is outdated and cannot protect citizens from health hazards, said Zhang.
The new standard will raise the bar by almost tripling the number of quality indicators to 106, including measuring items such as microorganism density, according to the agency.
Xinhua did not say how China plans to implement the standard, given the fact that even the previous standard was hard to enforce.
Earlier reports have indicated that as many as 300 million Chinese, or nearly one in every four, drink dirty water.
Source: Agence France-Presse
