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Tang, Y., Miao, X. Uphold China's plan for cleaning water. Nature 512, 371 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/512371a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/512371a
Bin HE
As a biologist not involved in either side of this correspondence, I found this response vague, lacking convincing evidence but filled with hand-waving arguments.
First, they didn't mention and address the central point of the original letter, i.e. upgrading the infrastructure will lead to waste of high quality water.
Second, they hand-wavingly argued that installing filtering unit will be more costly than upgrading the infrastructure. However, they couldn't give a number for the latter to compare to.
Moreover, their argument against the filtering system, namely (1) it is costly (2) people may not change their habit and (3) it's difficult and costly to institute a recycling system fail to convince me.
For (1), I think there are a range of choices with different price tags. For example, my family in Shanghai now uses a $20 water filter pitcher. In fact, most Chinese families are still used to boiling water. So the filtering unit's function is to provide a first line of purification, especially for chemicals that cannot be removed during boiling. For (3), I don't see a reason why recycling and changing the filters would be a problem. Both me and my wife's family now routinely request us to bring back filter units twice a year.
I was initially intrigued to see a correspondence arising, hoping to hear well reasoned opinions on the other side of the debate. However, I was disappointed after reading this letter, for reasons mentioned above.