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Overproduction takes shine off Chinese pearls
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-10 08:35


A woman tries a pearl necklace in a jewellery shop in Shanghai September 3, 2008. Over production of pearl-producing mussels is pushing down pearl prices and also damaging the environment from pollutants thrown into Chinese lakes to speed up pearl production. [Agencies]

Polluting Pearl Farmers

The massive quantities of pearls produced by China's pearl industry carry a hefty environmental cost.

Lake waters where the pearls are cultivated are greenish, cloudy and often foul-smelling from a mixture of pollution and fertilisers dumped into the water to help the mussels produce pearls faster.

"The disorderly growth of freshwater pearl cultivation in some regions, resulting in the dumping of large quantities of fertiliser into lakes and reservoirs, has seriously damaged those water bodies," said a document on the website of the agriculture department of central China's Hubei Province.

Hubei, one of China's biggest pearl producers, last year banned pearl cultivation in lakes and reservoirs, and restricted pearl-producing mussels to ponds.

Several cities and regions in southern China have also banned or restricted pearl cultivation in recent years.

But experts said mussels, used to produce the gems in freshwater, while oysters produce pearls in saltwater, should not pollute the environment if they are raised properly.

"Mussels eat plankton in the water and can therefore actually purify it," said Pan Jianlin, secretary-general of the Jiangsu Province Pearl Industry Association.

"But some farmers are not raising pearls properly. They use fertiliser to feed the plankton," he said.

Overly dense mussel populations compound the pollution, experts said.

"If mussels are raised in an enclosed body of water, it can easily lead to eutriphication," or a rise in chemical nutrients that causes a severe deterioration of water quality, said Cheng Wen, a professor at Xi'an University of Science and Technology.