From Reuters, via ABC News:
Most of the Yellow River, the second-longest in China and the cradle of early Chinese civilization, is so polluted it is not safe for drinking or swimming, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.
Nearly three-quarters of the river, which supplies water to 12 percent of China’s 1.3 billion people and 15 percent of its farmland, had been badly tainted by sewage, industrial waste, fertilizer and other pollutants, it said.