In mid-August, the Yunnan-based blogger Dong Rubin revealed that a nearby factory in south-west China – Luliang Chemicals – had dumped 5,000 tonnes of toxic chromium tailings on a hillside in the township of Yuezhou. The resulting water pollution killed fish and livestock, endangered the drinking water of tens of millions of people and attracted widespread media attention across China.

Speaking to Guangzhou’s Yangcheng Evening News, Dong explained the impact of the pollution incident: “At its highest, the most toxic type of chromium, hexavalent chromium, was 2,000 times over the limit. Contaminated water was flowing directly into the Nanpan River, which feeds the Pearl River.” The Pearl River is an important source of drinking water for the downstream city of Guangzhou ….

Chromium pollution has a major impact on the environment and restoring contaminated soil is difficult. In the 1970s, both Japan and the United States saw serious incidents of chromium pollution, the most famous being the 1993 case in California contested by the environmental activist Erin Brockovich, which formed the basis for the film of the same name. Developed nations have invested in methods for treating chromium waste, but to little effect. According to the China Chemical Times, many nations have instead reduced their production capacity and companies have closed down due to environmental pressures – and instead imported chromium compounds from developing nations, such as China. That has lead to rapid growth in the sector in China over the last 10 years, including the increased stockpiling of chromium tailings.

See also Paul Mooney’s ‘Dangerous Elements: Heavy Metal Pollution in China‘, via CDT.

Source: On Yunnan’s chromium trail – chinadialogue

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Post tags: cancer village, Guangzhou, industrial waste, Japan, Pearl River, United States, water contamination, Yunnan
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The river’s flow ranges from murky white to a bright shade of orange and the waters are so viscous that they barely ripple in the breeze. In Shangba, the river brings death, not sustenance.

“All the fish died, even chickens and ducks that drank from the river died. If you put your leg in the water, you’ll get rashes and a terrible itch,” said He Shuncai, a 34-year-old rice farmer who has lived in Shangba all his life.

“Last year alone, six people in our village died from cancer and they were in their 30s and 40s.”

Cancer casts a shadow over the villages in this region of China in southern Guangdong province, nestled among farmland contaminated by heavy metals used to make batteries, computer parts and other electronics devices.

Every year, an estimated 460,000 people die prematurely in China due to exposure to air and water pollution, according to a 2007 World Bank study.

Read more about “cancer villages” via CDT.

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Post tags: cancer village, Guangdong, industrial pollution, rivers, Shangba, water pollution
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Three decades of reforms and opening up since 1978 have transformed China from a rigidly ideological backwater into the world’s fourth largest economy, lifting millions out of poverty, but not without a price.

Nationwide there are dozens of places like Liukuaizhuang, where factories have blackened streams, poisoned farmland and choked the air.

Just 120 kilometers south of Beijing, Liukuaizhuang was a quiet village before the dramatic economic boom was kicked off by a series of low-key Communist reforms on Dec 18, 1978.

Twenty years later almost 100 chemical plants were scattered across what used to be farmland and thirty years on someone in almost every family is dead or dying of cancer — the youngest just seven years old — according to a local activist.

Liukuaizhuang is mentioned on worstpolluted.org as part of a list of the ten worst pollution problems of 2008. Read CDT’s coverage of other so-called cancer villages in China.

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Post tags: air pollution, cancer, cancer village, industrail pollution, Liukuaizhuang, sustainable development
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The walls of the village have recently been repainted with trees, waterfalls and the uplifting slogan: ‘I will contribute to the success of the Olympics and help establish a civilised new community.’

The people of Hou Wang Ge Zhung, however, have other matters on their mind. Sitting in front of his traditional brick house a few yards away, Kong Qingyu, 77, a farmer, spoke about his brother’s recent death from throat cancer. ‘Everything was OK until the factory came and then people started to die. You can’t see the pollution. But it is there. The factory pumps out waste after midnight.’

In a side street, Kong Xiang We, 57, described her husband’s illness – stomach cancer, according to doctors from Beijing University. ‘He’s getting weaker and weaker,’ she said. ‘In the past two months there have been two new cases.’

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Post tags: Beijing, cancer village, industrial pollution
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When a closer look is taken, the people of Shangba have been living with a malevolent curse for years. In fact, this town is now known as “Village of Death.” It has earned this name because, over time, cancer has claimed the lives of approximately 80 percent of the Shangba townspeople. It seems that no one living in Shangba, young or old, is safe from the threat of cancer…

The source of this epidemic of cancer is most likely coming from the water, both river and ground water. Today the Hengshui River has been referred to as “The Dead River,” and with good reason. [Full text]

See also previous stories about Shangba and other “cancer villages.”

[Image: Via Sprol.com]

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Post tags: cancer, cancer village, Shangba, water pollution
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It has been a long time since the Feng Chan He, the River of Fertility, in Xiditou ran clear and locals could swim and fish.

Today it is fetid and silted up, a casualty of the factories that line its banks and that brought unprecedented prosperity to this poor farming district near the port city of Tianjin.

Xiditou is now one of China’s growing number of so-called cancer villages, where locals say that the gross air, water and soil pollution over decades has caused an extraordinarily high number of cancer cases. [Full Text]

Read also Villages doomed by China’s cancer rivers by Richard Spencer, China’s ‘cancer villages’ pay heavy price for economic progress by Verna Yu, and Pollution Poisons China’s Progress by David J. Lynch.

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Post tags: cancer village, public health
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Shangba has become one of the country’s growing number of what have been called “cancer villages”.

A broad river runs to the side of the village, its shallow waters rippling over smooth stones. What they did not know was that mines further upstream were dumping their waste into it.

Scientist Chen Nengchang has been studying the cause and effects of the pollution on the village. He has found high levels of poisonous heavy metals in the water. He believes there is a direct connection between incidences of cancer and mining in the area. [Full Text]

- Also NYTimes’ Rivers Run Black, and Chinese Die of Cancer (Sept. 2004)

- China Daily’s story on “cancer village” of Jiangsu Province (May 2004)

- Yahoo News’ “Cancer village” highlights China’s water woes

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