CHINA: Farmers and rural residents having to live with the reality of heavy industrial pollution

Record ID: 216837

  • Title: CHINA: Farmers and rural residents having to live with the reality of heavy industrial pollution
  • Date: 14th December 2009
  • Summary: CHILD PLAYING ON PILE OF SAND LOCAL FARMER MRS. WU TALKING ON MOBILE PHONE
  • Embargoed: 29th December 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: China
  • Country: China
  • Topics: Environment / Natural World,Industry
  • Reuters ID: LVABEAMNEJQ6UM9J23LEUYZ1HA46
  • Story Text: Power plants and heavy industries have sprung up across much of China in recent decades to produce the electricity and materials fuelling the rising giant's economic miracle.
    As the world focuses on China's greenhouse gas emissions at the global climate change summit in Copenhagen which runs until December 18, the people living and working beside the industries that produce those emissions must cope with other bi-products.
    Thick air pollution, coal dust and contaminating factory run-off all plague industrial centres across the country, and have been blamed for health problems from lung cancer to birth defects.
    In a rural area of the vast Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, farmers now share the grassland with a coal chemical plant, an iron processing plant and a large coal-fired power station.
    Residents of a small village sitting on the edge of the Mengxi Industrial Zone of Wuhai city complain that pollution from the next-door iron processing plant is having a serious effect on both their health and their way of life.
    Sixty-year-old Mr. Cheng has farmed in the village for over 30 years.
    He said the air quality was so bad he could rarely see the view he once looked over from his small farmhouse.
    "Before it was so clear I could see the mountains and the Yellow River from afar. Now it's grey and we can see nothing," Cheng said.
    Another resident, Mrs Wu, said the factories, while providing some jobs for others, had brought little benefit to the farmers in the 15 years she had been living in the village .
    "There are so many factories, so us farmers have pollution. The crops are no good. When we used to harvest it was fine, but now our nostrils get all black. There's dirt up our noses and it's so terrible, so dirty. Our noses end up blacker than a coal miner's," she said.
    For decades, there were few fetters on the waste that factories, plants and power stations in China pumped into the air and water.
    Over the past 10 years, Beijing has strengthened efforts to limit pollution, punishing and shutting down some offenders.
    Growth is still a priority, however, especially for local governments, and environmental protection officials have relatively little sway.
    Five hundred kilometres east of Wuhai, residents of Xuanhua District in Beijing's neighbouring Hebei province are still complaining about pollution, despite the temporary closures of some plants for last year's Olympic Games.
    The area boasts plants that produce or process coal, steel, concrete, and fertilizers, as well as a coal-fired power station that appeared not to be in operation on Tuesday (December 8).
    Sixty-year-old Chang Xiangjiao and his wife Sheng Yun live on the edge of Yaohualukou village which backs onto the coal processing plant.
    Passing trucks scatter coal dust along the road beside their house and washing their clothes turns the water a dark, dirty grey.
    Chang and Sheng have seen the water and air quality steadily decline over the decades. However, they say both have recently improved slightly by the closure of a fertilizer processor and due to the Olympic restrictions.
    They are still concerned about the high incidence of chronic illnesses in the area.
    "My throat often feels uncomfortable, and I think it's got a little to do with the air. In our village, a lot of people get unexpected diseases. It's mostly lung cancer and colon cancer," said Chang.
    Areas of China badly hit by pollution often report higher-than-normal levels of cancers, respiratory diseases, diarrhoea and other illnesses.
    Two years ago, the World Bank estimated that 460,000 Chinese died prematurely every year from breathing polluted air and drinking or washing in dirty water.
    The World Bank estimated in 2007 that the health and other consequences of outdoor air and water pollution cost China's economy around 100 billion U.S. dollars a year, equal to about 5.8 percent of the nation's GDP.
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