A chicken farm making fertilizer from chicken droppings in Johor let large amounts of ammonia leach into the Johor River sporadically. As a result, much of the river’s water became badly polluted, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without clean tap water. A local waterworks also had to close down…
Several rivers in Sarawak are as good as dead. They’ve become so polluted that they are no longer able to support well-functioning ecosystems. In effect, they have become little more than open sewers where only bacteria and a few hardy species of plants and animals can thrive. Several other species…
We all know that burning sensation: acrid smog stings the eyes and irritates the throat. During the periodic haze from burning forests in Sumatra that envelopes much of Malaysia for days and weeks at a time, millions of Malaysians are exposed to massive amounts of harmful air-borne pollutants. Yet not…
We’ve all seen blue dogs. We’ve seen them in cartoons and children’s books. Yet in Mumbai some residents were recently surprised to see real-life blue dogs walk the streets. In an industrial area of the Indian metropolis several stray dogs recently took on distinct bright blue hues. While the canines’ new…
The health of many a Malaysian river is questionable, but it doesn’t get much worse than this: Sungai Tebrau in Johor has become so badly polluted that all marine life, save for a few resilient species of fish, has gone practically extinct in it. The cause of the pollution: the rampant…
Some experts expressed fears almost a year ago that a pernicious side-effect of unregulated bauxite mining in Pahang might well have been the pollution of local water sources with heavy metals. “Almost all the water for consumption in Kuantan is drawn downstream from the mines,” observed Dr. Maketab Mohamed, an associate professor at Universiti…
Toxic waste is, well, toxic to marine life. But there is at least one species of small fish that has become resilient to extremely high levels of industrial pollution … to the point of being almost miraculous. Living in four heavily polluted estuaries on the East Coast of the United States are small…
The water of Sungai Semantan in Pahang recently became so badly polluted that two local water treatment plants had to be shut down, leaving locals without clean water. That’s a fact. What remains to be determined is who is responsible. The likely culprits: three factories that may have been dumping…
Sungai Pinang is a short river that winds through some fine scenery on Penang. It also happens to be among the most polluted rivers in Malaysia. And it’s hardly alone in that dubious distinction on the island, which has long been facing severe problems with water pollution. How bad is…
Forty-three. That’s how many rivers in Malaysia are badly polluted. That may not seem too bad, considering that there are 473 rivers in total around the country that are monitored for their levels of pollution, and so 43 is less than a tenth of them. The trouble is that another…
The Moyog River in Sabah is a scenic, meandering strip of muddy water flanked by villages, whose residents depend on it for sustenance, especially during the dry season. Trouble is the river is badly polluted, which has caused plenty of hardships for locals in the district of Penampang, near Kota…
Uncle Woon, an elderly villager in Pahang, wanted to give vent to his ire over the havoc that local bauxite miners have wreaked on his home state’s environment. So one recent morning the 73-year-old set out on a 35km walk from bauxite-ravaged Kuantan to his hometown of Gambang as part…
Environmental friendliness may not come to us naturally; it often needs to be cultivated. And the sooner it is done, the better. That is why initiatives like a recent clean-up of Sungai Kinta, a river that runs through Ipoh, the capital of Perak state, are so welcome: they encourage youngsters to…
For almost an entire year now, the Malaysian public has been asking its government for help with a frightening pollution problem: irresponsible bauxite mining. A tide of toxic dust and mud is issuing from open bauxite mining pits and scarcely-covered trucks, spreading a layer of carcinogenic material over towns, countries…
Malaysia’s recent boom of poorly-regulated bauxite mining has resulted in what could easily be considered an environmental disaster. Created during bauxite extraction, red dust laden with heavy metals and radioactive elements is washing into rivers, bogging up fields and blanketing cities with a rust-colored layer of fallen sediment. Already, doctors…
There’s a storm of controversy surrounding Malaysia’s recent rise as a major bauxite producer. Bauxite mining has become a very profitable industry for the struggling country, but the pollution it creates is poisoning Malaysian citizens and ecosystems. About RM750 million (US$170.6 mil) has so far been generated from bauxite mining…