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Toxic runoff from China's textile industry has made its way into rivers and other waterways. Many are now heavily polluted with chemicals used for dying, printing, bleaching and washing.
Xintang in Guangdong Province is known as China's "Jeans Town." In 2008 it produced 260 million pairs of jeans, making up more than 60 percent of national production and roughly 40 percent of jeans consumption in the United States that year.
The Dong River running through the town is blackened and covered in foam.
[Yan Zhao, Greenpeace Toxics Campaigner]:
"We have actually interviewed students who are teenagers and they can't actually remember the rivers being clean. And of those middle-aged men, they can still remember swimming in those rivers and fishing in those rivers. They can no longer do that anymore. And their children can no longer do that anymore."
About 186 miles west of Xintang, the town of Gurao produces 200 million bras a year. Its Xiaoxi River is also polluted.
Heavy metals were found in 17 out of 21 samples taken from the Dong and Xiaoxi rivers. Some of the cadmium levels were 128 times the national standard, and the strongly alkaline water reached pH values of nearly 12.
[Yan Zhao, Greenpeace Toxics Campaigner]:
"Actually, Xintang and Gurao are not unique cases. They are 133 textile industrial clusters like Xintang and Gurao according to the statistics of the China Textile Association. So, we are really afraid that this is just the tip of the iceberg."
According to the Chinese regime's National Textile and Apparel Council, the country's gross output of textiles grew 10 percent in 2009. Most of it is exported to the United States, Europe and Japan.
