An environmental advocacy group yesterday accused Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) and AU Optronics Corp (AUO) of having caused water pollution for years and continuing to discharge more than 24,000 tonnes of wastewater into a river in Hsinchu County every day.
Wastewater discharge from the two companies’ LCD plants in Taoyuan County has sparked protests from residents over the years amid disputes over toxicity levels and whether wastewater should be discharged into Siaoli River (霄裡溪) in Hsinchu County or Laojie River (老街溪) in Taoyuan County.
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) amended the drinking water management regulations in 2009 listing safety levels for two heavy metal substances — indium and molybdenum, at 70ug/L, Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan (CET) said.
However, based on the EPA’s water quality monitoring data from wells near Siaoli River, molybdenum levels reached 91.2ug/L in November 2010, CET Taipei Office director Millie Lee (李怡蒨) said.
Tests last year also showed that molybdenum levels surpassed safety levels five times in three consecutive months last year, including a test that yielded 138.2ug/L — almost two times the safety level — at a well in March last year, she added.
Lee said people living nearby drink water from those wells.
“They have been drinking this water for 13 years,” she said, accusing the EPA of concealing from residents that the water contained excessive levels of heavy metal substances.
“Molybdenum can irritate the eyes, nose and throat, and affect weight, digestion and uric acid levels. It is especially harmful to people with chronic liver or kidney disease,” she said, adding that about 35,000 people are drinking water from the wells.
The group added that while the EPA’s water quality monitoring data showed that the indium and molybdenum levels had dropped below safety levels since July last year, this is because the two companies now use vehicles to transfer large amounts of highly concentrated wastewater for processing at Taoyuan’s Kuanyin Industrial Park.
However, up to 24,000 tonnes of wastewater from the two companies continue to be discharged into the river every day, it said.
The CET said the EPA should demand that the two companies stop discharging polluted wastewater into Siaoli River and begin collecting health data from nearby residents for evaluation.
Hsu Yung-hsing (許永興), director of the EPA’s Department of Water Quality, said the agency had not concealed anything from the public, and its water quality monitoring data is available to the public.
Hsu added that the heavy metal substances discovered in the water had not yet been proven to have originated from the two companies.
The EPA has instructed nearby households that rely on water from the wells to switch to alternative water supplies, and has asked the two firms to present plans to improve water quality.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater