China's environmental situation has been described as "grim" in an annual update on the country's environment released this week.
The update by China's Ministry of Environmental Protection said that overall pollution problems were serious last year and reporting on the update, the state-controlled newspaper China Daily said there has been a "marked deterioration in China's air, water and land quality".
The 2012 Environmental Conditions Report addressed water and air pollution, the two types of pollution that have received the most attention over recent months. The report found that 57.3% of the groundwater in 198 cities in 2012 was "bad" or "extremely bad", while more than 30% of the country's major rivers were "polluted" or "seriously polluted".
