The smell is the first thing that hits you on the banks of the Citarum River in West Java, Indonesia. The odour is dense: rubbish rotting in hot sun mixed in with an acrid tone of chemical waste.
Some 9 million people live in close contact with the river, where levels of faecal coliform bacteria are more than 5,000 times mandatory limits, according to the findings of the Asian Development Bank in 2013.
Lead levels are more than 1,000 times the US Environmental Protection Agency drinking water standard and levels of other heavy metals such as aluminium, iron and manganese are above the international average.
The consequences are catastrophic:
- Villagers downstream suffer from neurological disorders due to chronic exposure to mercury and lead.
- Birth defects have been documented in areas near industrial outflows.
- Fishing communities, once prosperous, are now unemployed and malnourished due to aquatic extinction.
- Locals live without access to safe drinking water—even rainwater is polluted by airborne chemical residues.
Curtesy of http://www.theenvironmentalblog.org and http://www.theguardian.com
The Environment Magazine 
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