The river receives a large quantity of municipal sewage and wastewater from industrial effluent.
The Panlong River of Kunming should not be confused with another, longer, river of the same name (also 盘龙江), which flows through south-eastern Yunnan and Vietnam, and enters the Red River.
References
Duan, Chang-Qun; Hu, Bin; Wang, Zheng-Hong; Wen, Chuan-Hao; Yan, Shen-Qi; Jiang, Xiao-Hua; Wang, Ding-Kang; Li, Qing; Liang, Xiao-Feng (1999), "Tradescantia bioassays for the determination of genotoxicity of water in the Panlong River, Kunming, People's Republic of China", Mutation Research/Fundamental and Molecular Mechanisms of Mutagenesis, 426 (2): 127–31, doi:10.1016/S0027-5107(99)00054-8, PMID10350584