A leading Chinese environmentalist yesterday challenged multinational companies (MNCs) to commit to not using factories found to pollute China's air and water.

"China is manufacturing for the rest of the world, but while we export all these cheap products, the waste is being dumped in China's backyard, contaminating our air, water, soil and coastal waters," Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, told reporters in Hong Kong.

Ma said a third of the southern part of China, including Hong Kong, was now affected by sulfur dioxide, a noxious air pollutant caused by industrialization that can cause respiratory problems. In Yiyang City, Hunan Province, 97 percent of rainfall was sulfuric acid rain in 2006, he said.

Ma's agency launched an online interactive database this week that names 4,300 companies that have violated China's air pollution standards over the last few years. Last year, he named and shamed some 9,400 firms pumping untreated effluence into China's waterways.

"We call on the big-box retailers and large-scale industry to manage their suppliers in a more responsible way. If they one day openly announce that 'we won't use polluters as our suppliers,' we think that will have a very big impact on China's pollution control."

Since the launch of the online water pollution database, only 50 companies have come forward to find out how to get their names removed.

All the data is pulled from publicly available government sources and can be as brief as one line, or very detailed about what kind of effluence they have flooded a stream with, Ma added.

(Shanghai Daily December 14, 2007)