Aiming at the difference between China and western countries, we designed two kinds of questionnaires which is basically similar (Chinese);(English).Totally we acquired 141 questionnaires in which 81 of them is from China and 60 from other countries.

During the research, we try to let the respondents estimate the heavy metal pollution level in their hometown without providing them any statistics of it. Then after recycling enough data, we compared and analyzed the consequence of questionnaires and the statistics we collected.

This is a map we painted based on the statistics of the questionnaires. The dark green spot on the map is a representative of those people who considered their hometowns which have suffered the heavy metal pollution yet.

It is obviously that, from the public perspective, severe heavy metal pollution usually occurs in industrial area and the comparable prosperous cities in the developing countries. Without doubting, that’s very easy to understand that they sacrifice the environment to get the economic growth.

Most of the countries, when it comes to its growth from ‘developing’ to ‘developed’, with the multifactor of its population growth, industry accumulating, imperfect technique and the climate and geography of its own, it does have more and severe heavy metal pollution.

This is a river basin of China and the spot is based on Chinese questionnaires.

According to the Chinese residence, whatever the pollutant is, pollution seems always concentrate at the middle and downstream. And at the same time, the industrial center of China is at the downstream of Yangtze River and Yellow River so these places become the harder-hit area of heavy metal pollution.

However, take Yangtze River as an example, there are several polluted area in the upstream which are the same severe situation as the downstream.

The data of this graph comes from our Chinese questionnaire as well. The reports from different medium recent years might contribute to the variation of the data, because the reports about mercury and chromium contaminants were in the majority, which corresponds with our graph. But when it comes to how serious it is about the heavy metal water pollution in China.

Excepting those data that can be used in the map, other statistic results about some questions seem to reflect the different attitude to water quality between Chinese and western people.

Q1: Is there any water heavy metals contamination on local?

A. No 14.81%；63.64%

B. Yes, but not very serious 65.43%；27.27%

C. Yes, very bad 19.75%；9.09%

Compared with the European who thought they live with clean water, most of Chinese considered their life have suffered from heavy metal pollution more or less.

Q2: Do you concentrate about the water contamination?

A. No 20.99%；27.27%

B. Yes, but slightly 49.38%；27.17%

C. Yes, extremely 29.63%；45.45%

Q3: Do you think the tap-water in your house is contaminated by heavy metals?

A. No 17.28%；72.73%

B. Not sure 71.6%；27.27%

C. Yes 11.11%；0.00%

European have more faith towards their tap water.

Q4: Do you facilitate water purifier at home?

A. Yes 32.1%；45.45%

B. No 67.9%；54.55%

Most of the Chinese and European don’t have water clarifier, but there is an interesting phenomenon that people in Europe where is considered has a better water quality are more proper to own a water clarifier.

Q5: Do you know any methods as following of detecting heavy metal contamination?

A. Chemical detection 90.12%；60.00%

B. Biological detection 56.79%；70.00%

C. Physical detection 41.98%；50.00%

Physical detection methods of heavy metal pollution in water bodies are clearly less than the other two kinds of detection methods, such as biological or chemical. In chemical and biological detection of these two types of methods, Chinese people are aware of the basic chemical method, while European is more biased in favor of biological detection method, but their understanding of chemical detection method is not much lower than the biological detection method.

Q6: Do you think the present approaches that detect heavy metals are complicated?

A. Yes 75.31%；46.15%

B. No 24.69%；53.85%

Q7: Do you think the present approaches that detect heavy metals are high-cost?

A. Yes 83.95%；61.54%

B. No 16.05%；38.46%

For water quality testing, the general evaluation of Chinese is complicated and high cost. European think the testing method is more realistic, after all, if want to have an accurate judgment towards the quality of the water situation, time and material costs are indispensable.

Q8: How do you think the genetically modified microbes using for restoring water heavy metals contamination?

A. Very promising, and know of it 32.1%；18.18%

B. Very promising, but don’t know about it 46.91%；45.45%

C. Have no idea 20.99%；36.36%

Data from the simple shows that people around the world have a good impression of biological testing method, but the majority don’t know too much about this detection method. To raise public concentration of biological water quality testing, we need more public propaganda.