Clothing on Our Backs, Mercury in the River

Did you know that even though the Citarum River is full of mercury and toxic chemicals, 35 million people are still drinking from it?

Factories that make clothing for companies including H&M, Gap, and Adidas are dumping poison into the river, and the government is doing nothing to stop it.  I was horrified when I heard about the news segment exposing the disgusting chemical cocktail dumped into this river.

The Citarum River is in Indonesia, and it used to be clean enough that people used it for fishing. Now, the river is so filthy that villagers can no longer fish from it and must sell trash they find floating on its surface to make a living.

And the river's toxic water is still used to irrigate crops and fill water taps in major cities.

The Indonesian government needs to intervene to protect its people from this deluge of toxic chemicals. If it doesn't, thousands of people will become sick, crops will die, and the environment will never recover.  In the UK land that has been contaminated with Mercury is declared unfit for farming indefinitely - that's how dangerous this chemical is.  In Japan mercury poisoning destroyed nearly a whole generation when it made its way into the seafood chain.

The majority of those factories polluting the river are sending clothing overseas, including to England and the United States. If enough people around the world shine a spotlight on this injustice, Indonesia will be forced to clean up its act.  If you want to sign the petition then here's the link:

Please sign my petition to ask the Indonesian government to protect its people from these toxic chemicals dumped by clothing factories.

The other thing we can do while we are waiting for the government to act is to boycott H & M, Gap and Adidas produces, while sending e-mails of protest to their inbox and posting our disgust up on their facebook pages.  Corporations bow to consumer pressure faster than they do to governments.