Factories along the Yangtze River

For many years there has been growing concern over the manufacture and use of hazardous chemicals, and over the presence of many of these chemicals in the environment as a result of their release from industrial sources or from products that the chemicals have been used to manufacture. Largely as a result of legislation, the manufacture and use of some of the most hazardous chemicals has greatly reduced in many countries and regions in recent years. However, the opposite trend is being seen in China for certain hazardous chemicals, where their manufacture and/or use has either continued largely unchanged or, in some instances, actually increased considerably in the last decade. Photos include documentation of Greenpeace study carried out to determine the concentrations of alkylphenols, perfluorinated chemicals and cadmium, lead and mercury in the tissues of wild fish collected from the Yangtze River in China.