The world’s most polluted river | DW Documentary

our journey begins in the mountains of the island of java at the foot of the weiyang volcano there is a lake the cradle of shitta room tt

river

Bakhtiar a geographer from a university in the region knows this place well see Tucci Santi is the name of this sacred lake at the beginning of the cheetah room if we walk a bit more i will show you the actual fountain where the bubbles come out of the ground the water here is very pure clean enough to wash your face with it is more than home to me i sit in peace here the water is still so clean the legend says it is the water of youth the sheet our room is so important for Indonesia very very important thanks to the dams the

river

generates enough electricity for the islands of Java and Bali is a source of drinking water and used for fish farming and agriculture three million people live along the banks of the river and another 11 million live around the source of the shiteru a wonder indonesia the river meanders through the d island of java for 300 kilometers and empties into the sea east of jakarta the country's capital for the first few kilometers the shittim is just a stream it quickly becomes an essential river for the farmers, then the river crosses the largest cities on the islands, but as the kilometers go by we see something completely different mounds of garbage white plastic replaces blue water in Indonesia despite strong growth in consumption the treatment system The waste is not developed yet so the river serves as an open garbage can and the fishermen are now fishing for bottles there are no more fish here because the water is very

polluted

Rudy is 23 years old he walks around the schita room for nine hours every days he works in a recycling cooperative I am the

most

with plastic water bottles I collect more than 50 kilos a day between five and six euros for six years Rudy it's been getting its hands on the horrors of the river the worst is the smell of dead animals but i'm used to it under this mangrove f The forests trapped in the roots thousands of pieces of debris have accumulated a little more each day and a great amount not it is collected Indonesian rivers dump 200 thousand tons of plastic into the sea every year visible plastic pollution shocking but not the

most

dangerous the inhabitants of the Shotaro manats suffer mainly from chemical pollution to understand what is happening we go to one of the many villages along the river and its textile factories Neuer has always lived here every morning this 42-year-old woman goes to the well that is fed by the room I used the river water to wash dishes wash clothes to shower and wash vegetables the color changes sometimes it's black sometimes it's red this morning the water is clean so I take the opportunity to wash the vegetables in any case we have no choice there is no there are other sources of water Noah lives right next to the well in the heart of this district where 3,000 people live a quarter of the inhabitants are under 15 years of age it is the most fragile who seem to suffer the most from contamination like Knorr - children Wow my eldest son feels nauseated the last time the doctor said he had a liver problem he also has a headache and he can't calm down and he doesn't have a doctor's appointment the clinic is half an hour away by car they do it twice a month help your son The older man gets sick as soon as he finishes his medication, how long has he been sick about four three days and what symptoms does he have chest pain when he coughs yesterday he felt sick and vomited as soon as he tried to eat my neighbors have the same problems because we use the river water and the river is very dirty, yes, we also see many cases of diarrhea, especially in children, it may be related to the fact that they drink contaminated water, but as for the skin diseases that we see, e It is difficult to prove scientifically, it is impossible to draw definitive conclusions, there is no epidemiological study and no proof of the impact of room pollution on the local population. nes a man is fighting to change that denne this donny runs the only environmental association in the region for 17 years has been inspecting the schita room for evidence of contamination by the Lu textile industry in this region there are 500 textile manufacturers located throughout along the cheetah hall and they discharge their wastewater directly into the river on average each of these plants disposes of 1,300 liters of wastewater per day so it has different colors depending on the dyes they use which market they are supplying and the type of clothes have to do here is the discharge from various factories that you can see today it is dark red and it is very hot that is why they called our trick the most

polluted

river in the

world

somewhere it makes me want to cry it is so sad to see the Cheetara min this state women can't see my river so dirty who are these companies that empty their wastewater in the room we recover the lis ta of textile factories along the r Here they are on this map now here we can see all the textile factories on the banks of the tartar hall.

We have compiled data from the Ministry of Commerce to provide a clearer picture. Seventy-five percent of its production is mainly for export. to the American and European markets one of the largest exporters in the country is the gist x group it is difficult to access but the company agrees to let us work here 4,500 people gist x produces mainly polyester fabric a synthetic material that requires a large amount of chemical products the The group works mainly with large clothing stores in these buildings. 1,000 machines operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The factory produces about three million meters of fabric per month for the entire

world

.

Each of these machines processes the wires with water. full of chemicals the then the sewage flow into settling tanks so this is our sewage treatment so our sewage treatment size is 50 meters wide and one hundred meters long and th So the depth is around 6 meters. Kilometer conversion. Do you analyze the water of the device before a problem? Not every day, only five daily parameters, while international standards give at least 31. I don't think so. Yes, you still need a filter if you want to drink. but i mean ok you can pass but for me eye check is what strikes i think i put a hat on if i dont itch then well we're not really convinced the itchy hand test is going down , maybe here too mosquito then down more mosquito sorry yes we want to know what really is in the wastewater of this subcontractor of the global textile industry to find out we have to follow this inconspicuous white pipe on the left that pours waste from plants into the shiteru the overflow channel is hidden under the foliage at the edge of the site this area is off limits and to access it you need to cross the river from the other side there is another one right there at the discharge exit of Gist X Factory, we are approaching the 30-meter water pipe the water is already covered with a white foam film this is the essentials X did not want to show us we are on company property without a car curling so we need to be quick we take two leaders to analyze oh as we walk down the room we are struck by the smoke from another factory lens the world leader in artificial fiber the company supplies most of the major clothing brands again huge settling tanks one of the villagers tells us where to find his overflow channel and then on the banks of the room is here what a stench the smell is suffocating it is here 300 meters from the factory where lensing dumps its waste out of sight and close to fields and is home to a yellow and black waste stream that ends up in the river we have more time this time so we directly test the water with our apparatus, a test kit for different contaminants recommended by a scientist, can you hear me, professor, loud and clear, professor legume is a chemist who is special? izes in water analysis what should be the first chromium analysis because chromates are widely used in the textile industry that's why I suggested it as an indicator and chlorides can be an indicator of contamination arsenic ammonium nitrates 10 milligrams of phosphate per liter body difference that The results only give us a rough assessment of the contamination for a more accurate reading.

I'm going to take some water samples for a lab to analyze later. The rice fields are only a few meters away. This is the main crop throughout the shiteru. This is where. Kang Yusuf's plot is look how rotten everything is, so what about the rice plants? Polluted water makes my rice roots rot and then insects attacked them. Look at the insects, there are a lot of them, especially aphids. Kang Yusuf's plots are literally surrounded by textiles. factories the water that irrigates your rice field is purple and foamy what contaminants are hiding in this rice have you ever tasted rice before?

We never take our rice and water samples to Padang University professors institute of ecology soon RD runs the only environmental studies laboratory in the region we can measure the temperament of most dangerous species like arsenic and then mercury also cadmium carried the effect of a few meters, for example, cancer and even then, when the productivity, our women, the productivity, something like thank you both, after continuing, thank you, see you, thank you, it is very close from the factories while we wait for the results of the tests, we receive some of the women and children of the village together we offer to analyze their hair to better understand what contaminants they are exposed to a delicate protocol to advise us we put Brice Appenzeller online you can listen to me professor yes he is the person to talk to in Europe when it comes to investigating contaminants with hair samples he is the head of the human biomonitoring unit at the luxembourg health institute what is the point of hair analysis compared to blood or urine analysis blood or urine analysis gives us information about the few hours before taking a test samples with hair is different the growth rate is around one centimeter per model and it is easy to get samples over one centimeter long so we have information covering a period of several months and that makes the sample really representative of individuals chronic exposure what is found in the hair has passed through the body and through the blood system children have a metabolism that is still maturing and precisely for this reason they are especially vulnerable to any type of endocrine disruptors in total we take hair from We sent ten children from the same neighborhood between the ages of 12 months and 14 years directly to Professor Appenzeller in Luxembourg as we left town we got a phone call from the environmental activists we met on our rafting trip hi Martin I think you should come and see the Pan Asia dump outlet where they are dumping their waste in the middle of the night one of our contacts is on site the factory is located right on the edge of the sheet arun ok ok pan asian group is one of the biggest subcontractors to indonesia in the textile industry we file a complaint with panasia because when the water rises it reaches our fields and our skin starts to itch the water is dirty the smell is unbearable you know that the villager I spoke to told me to wear a mask if I went near the water because it is true that even from here we can smell it and it is quite strong thank you it's very hot and the smell is unbearable look at the color of the water look I'm leaving here okay thank you very much this time we can't give this sample to d r. sounds lab in indonesia won't have time to analyze it we have to send them to another lab in france that specializes in environmental studies meanwhile we find indonesian biologist dr.

Soong Rd just finished analyzing the first two water and rice samples that we had given him he asked us to take him to the rice field where we took the samples because he wants to be clear that he almost can't believe what he has found in the rice one thing with this strain is the total chromium content in the party planes we found to be very high 28.0 ate four milligrams per kilogram will be found in a laboratory the concentration in the soles of the body is much higher than the recommended standard in the limits we found a 29.0 3 milligrams per kilogram while the standard only 0.25 a human body especially good children will put this very dangerous this laboratory will disturb the network system but the central or peripheral system so if children exposed to the laboratory then they will have intellectual disabilities something like this this is the worst effect of the laboratory I think the main source of contamination is from the textile industries If the government sets a very strict standard then the investor will not reach the energy, but you know, if there is no standard for many parameters, then we sacrifice people.

This room-growing rice is sold all over Indonesia. It is contaminated with lead centsixteen times above the Indonesian consumption standard. a high level because heavy metals accumulate in rice fields this lead contamination seems to agree with dr. loudness other test results for wastewater from textile factories essentially X water from overflow canal lead level is 1.5 times higher than international tolerated limits for industrial wastewater for wastewater from lens company es Worse, the lead level is 3.5 times higher, but that's not all. Another parameter draws our attention. The sulfate lens releases 7087 milligrams per liter, almost ten times the world recommendations. High levels of sulfate in water can cause diarrhea, especially in children. children this is one of the main causes of infant mortality in the country in indonesia 147 thousand children die every year before the age of five we finally receive the results from the french laboratory for the pan asia factory where we take the water samples at night we read them at Denny we answer Donny's house the activists of the Association for the defense of the environment together contact us To the French chemist who interpreted the panAsian water analysis professor Bernard Lagoo, the scientist who specializes in water contamination, what do you say about the results?

The water that he had analyzed as practically sewage water. Urban wastewater given bacteriology and taking into account the chemical oxygen demand. Also, we have some tributyl. Phosphate is not a product that I see very often it is a solvent and then we also have some phthalates that exceed the limits established by the quality standards of the European Union there is nonylphenol in concentrations of 70 micrograms per liter that is high that is above environmental standards enforce in europe and nonylphenol zar products which are endocrine disruptors nonylphenol or phthalates are not due to regular human activity no these are chemicals used in the textile industry have you seen similar levels of nonylphenol before in his carrer?

Oh you can never use water in agriculture no no it shouldn't be used for irrigation what about washing to wash food? oo septic, the water has become dirty, so what should we do? We have no other choice. We depend on this water. Danny lives here and asks what they can do to use the water anyway because at least they don't have a choice. boil it and reoxygen it re aerate as it cools and you need to decant it because it will have suspended particles in it so at least boil it and my main advice is not to drink it.

I am sad for me and the residents along the cheetara because the victims of this contamination do not know anything about the degree of danger to which they are exposed. Thank you, this will help us prove that the textile industry is polluting the water and what impact it has on humans and the ecosystem. Until now we did not know. I don't know exactly what contaminants were in the water. What major clothing brands make. The polluting factories that we have detected supply. We examined dozens of garments and then their labels to find out which ones work in Indonesia.

Here are the best ones made in Indonesia. computers, water by H&M made in indonesia made in indonesia then we get the lists of indonesian subcontractors of these big brands the factories we have taken the sewage from are listed we can quote yahoo yes the company is registered as one of the subcontractors of hmms pan Asia also works with other brands such as Uniqlo, it was in the water of the pan asian group that we found high levels of nonylphenol, a powerful hormone disruptor. The Uniqlo brand also outsources the essential explant and its waste with high levels of lead and gives the plant record levels of sulfate in its wastewater, supplies raw materials to companies like Gap, ASOS Marks & Spencer and once again Uniqlo and H&M the giant. swedish H&M has an office in Jakarta the capital of Indonesia they are here on the 21st floor we have already tried to contact them by email but unsuccessfully unbelievably the director of H&M Indonesia agrees to meet us ever since we filmed with our mobile phone so we did an analysis of what we found wa Well yeah, it was kind of interesting, especially being surprised by one of you.

Is it something they've said before? It's um, no, I can't answer the questions today in this meeting, but I'll go back and look at the report and the devious calm. so you get the answer yes yes three weeks after this interview hmm write to us we are sincerely concerned about the subject of your report H&M has the scale of size and the ambition to lead the change towards a truly sustainable fashion industry production of raw materials materials such as those from South Pacific plants in lenses concerns the entire textile industry this is a major challenge that we will solve with the entire industry we will continue to choose the best possible alternatives to the pan Asia Jaya body Factory that we have led independently carried out audits the last one in July 2017 despite numerous requests this H&M supplier never authorized us to analyze its wastewater again the Japanese brand Uniqlo also involved responds to the Analyzes we had access to did not take into account the presence lead and sulfate in industrial wastewater.

Thank you for pointing out the unacceptable levels of these parameters near the essential explant in the case of Pan Asia Jaya. We consult reports showing levels of nonylphenol x' and phthalates that are below your results. However, we commissioned independent experts to investigate further on the site. We could have given many more examples. 252 clothing brands work with Indonesian subcontractors who dumped sewage into the covered room The big fashion groups here are all gathered in the same Association, the lobby of the textile industry in Indonesia, a key sector with a turnover of 10 billion of euros, for example, Disney is its representative.

Would you drink this water? one of your members would you drink this water would you use it for your irrigation if you lived in it would use it even if you saw all the podiums there we have not chosen you sad for your country well yes but for the environment when you see that we have no solution when you talk to the brand and then you cut the order and the factory is closed simple so the brains have the real power yes to the brim and it's common in clothes yes and then it ends father what makes you feel that you see the children live around the factories a times like this if you have that much pollution i think maybe next year 50 we are now what is the x-men do you know phillip maxwell a half smile textile lobby spokesman acknowledges industry impact on health of sheeta room residents and the curtain falls before reaching his ominous predictions could the Indonesian government not take action to prevent this chemical contamination in the Ministry of Environment responsible for Pollution Control He agrees to meet with us reads our analyzes a little surprised I plan to take sample and if the sample confirms this number we will ask the local government or a revised effluent permit and also the deadline for the textile industry can be revised we will review the parameters not just because maybe we include sulfur, we include a layer of a metal or some dignity good news for the residents of the mill oh good news that is quickly overshadowed by the latest results of our research hair analysis professor Appenzeller sends us luxembourg health institute report on average hair samples from indonesian children contain more than 54 different contaminants 54 contaminants in the hair of these children is that a frequently seen or unusually high number 54 out of 140 that we can scan is quite high if we had searched for more molecules we definitely would have found more cont amines in the samples we were testing so in a sense it's just the tip of the iceberg we give these results to the mothers of the children we sampled like Noir and Yuda if the children get sick again these tests could help specialists to better diagnose them in total we took hair from 45 children living near textile factories for the first time professor appenzeller will include indonesia in his new scientific study at the end of this journey there is a ray of hope what if it were possible to produce clothes throughout the Sheeta room respecting the environment and the health of the residents?

This is the challenge that this large textile factory assumes, the only one in the country that has received an international ecological label with very high standards from abroad. The wastewater goes up and down from the sedimentation tanks and also for filtering and oxygenating the solid materials are even separated and then recycled in total there are 12 stages of treatment actually this water is already in the drinking water standard before and after this is a small example to show the world that even we can still do the business and then we still produce the least harmful substance e to the environment the drill making drill and likewise above is quite seen and most of the customers maybe don't know it yet but i'm sure in the future they will start looking into this and hopefully you can get more orders from Outside the fabrics from this factory are ten percent more expensive than their Indonesian competitors is that the price of a shitty room to go back to being the country's holiest river instead of the world's most polluted to meet global demand for textile production in Indonesia is expected to rise by 75% by 2030 major clothing brands no longer can look the other way too many victims are paying the high price that