CHINA: Cancer village suffers from chromium pollution as environmental groups pursue a lawsuit against the factory said to be releasing the substance on behalf of the affected villagers

Record ID: 837962

  • Title: CHINA: Cancer village suffers from chromium pollution as environmental groups pursue a lawsuit against the factory said to be releasing the substance on behalf of the affected villagers
  • Date: 17th January 2012
  • Summary: FUNERAL BANNERS OUTSIDE HOME RELATIVES AND FRIENDS GATHERED FOR FUNERAL MOURNING FOR ELDERLY MAN WHO DIED OF BRAIN CANCER CHINESE ALTAR PHOTOGRAPH OF ELDERLY MAN ON ALTER (SOUNDBITE) (Mandarin) 47-YEAR-OLD VILLAGER, CHANG SHICHEN, SAYING: "Why was it that such a chemical factory was built here and not Beijing and Shanghai? That is because in Beijing and Shanghai, there are people watching. It's not that they cannot be built there." RELATIVES AND FRIENDS GATHERED FOR MOURNING RELATIVES FOLDING JOSS PAPER FOR MOURNING JOSS PAPER IN PLASTIC BAG BEIJING, CHINA (JANUARY 16, 2012) (REUTERS) MA TIANJIE, GREENPEACE SENIOR CAMPAIGNER ON TOXIC, WORKING ON COMPUTER IN OFFICE MA LOOKING AT COMPUTER SCREEN SHOWING POLLUTION SITE IN YUNNAN MA'S FACE COMPUTER SCREEN SHOWING POLLUTED WATER (SOUNDBITE) (Mandarin) MA TIANJIE, GREENPEACE SENIOR CAMPAIGNER ON TOXIC, SAYING: "This is the first time a civil environmental protection organization can be recognized as the accuser in a public service case. This means that in the future if similar cases occur, environmental protection organizations or civil organizations can represent 'the nature', that is to say, represent those bodies with no voices or means to be acknowledged or seek for justice under the current judicial system." QUJING, YUNNAN PROVINCE, CHINA (RECENT) (REUTERS) VILLAGERS AT PORTABLE WATER POINT VILLAGERS USING WATER FROM PORTABLE WATER POINT TO WASH THEIR VEGETABLES CABBAGE IN BOWL OF WATER VILLAGERS WASHING VEGETABLES VILLAGERS WASHING VEGETABLES IN BOWL VILLAGE STREETS WOMAN LOOKING ON
  • Embargoed: 1st February 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: China, China
  • City:
  • Country: China
  • Topics: Crime,Health,Industry
  • Reuters ID: LVACACRO273JSVTMA2RLYNFCEGUN
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  • Story Text: Chinese villagers living in an industrial park on the outskirts of the southwestern city of Qujing in Yunnan province are struggling to cope in the aftermath of the pollution of their land and water by a known carcinogen, chromium-6.
    A three-storey high hill of chromium slag was dumped by drivers from the Yunnan Luliang Peace Technology Company in the vicinity of the neighbouring Xiaoxin and Xinglong villages located in Luliang county, villagers say.
    The runoff from chromium-6, listed as a carcinogen by the World Health Organisation, has seeped into the Nanpan River, turning the waters yellow and murky.
    Villagers had complained for many months to local officials that cattle were dying and people living there were experiencing unusually high rates of cancer. But their pleas were ignored.
    It wasn't until a report last year in the Yunnan Information News which stated the dumping of 5,000 tonnes of chromium-6 had polluted the waters in the Nanpan River and caused the death of the village's cattle, that alarm bells started ringing.
    The Nanpan River is a main tributary of the Pearl River that flows into neighbouring Guangdong province, the economic powerhouse of China.
    In September last year, the local government arrested five people for the illegal dumping and ordered the Yunnan Luliang Peace Technology Company to shut down its production of chromium and sodium dichromate.
    Investigations by environmental groups found that the chromium content in the water exceeded the permissible levels by some 200 times.
    And there have been studies showing exposure to chromium-6 causes leukaemia and cancer of the stomach, liver and breast.
    Today, the hill of chromium is covered in slabs of metal roofing. The local environmental bureau said three officers were monitoring the company 24 hours to ensure that production was stopped and that the entire detoxification process would be completed this August.
    But the serious effects of the pollution remain.
    Fifteen-year-old Wu Wenyong lies tethered to three plastic tubes in a hospital in the provincial capital Kunming, his hair has gone from four sessions of chemotherapy.
    His hardscrabble life in Xiaoxin village took a sudden turn for the worse as one day last September, his face ballooned and tumour-like growths started developing on his neck.
    He was diagnosed with two different types of cancer - thymoma, the cancer of the thymus gland, and leukaemia.
    His father, 41-year-old Wu Shuliang, said he was finding no answers in his quest for the cause of his son's illness. But the suspicion of it being caused by the chromium pollution lingers on.
    "In the past, we did not know anything about it. When he was sick, we didn't know what it was. When we asked the doctors, they also said it is hard to say how it happened. Our plot of farmland was just next to the chromium slag. They (the factory) even dug a drain next to our land for the runoff," he said.
    Wu said his farming family had been struggling to find money to pay off the medical bills as the local government and factory are not fully investigating the causes of the pollution and thus not facing up to the problems caused by it.
    In the villages of Xinglong and Xiaoxin, set in an industrial park where goats and cows roam in parched fields, villagers now do not drink the water from the river.
    Everyone in these two villages said they knew of someone who contracted cancer after the industrial park was set up.
    However, there have been no epidemiological studies to validate their claims.
    In Xinglong village, a family mourned the death of an elderly man who died of brain cancer.
    At his funeral wake, talk of the effects of the chromium pollution stood out.
    The farming communes here are among the hundreds of millions of peasants already at the bottom of a society now divided between rich and poor.
    Few believe the government will attend to their calls for a thorough investigation and a just solution and compensation to the chromium pollution for such a poor community of farmers.
    "Why was it that such a chemical factory was built here and not Beijing and Shanghai? That is because in Beijing and Shanghai, there are people watching. It's not that they cannot be built there," said 47-year-old villager Chang Shichen.
    China's enforcement of the laws regulating the disposal of such chemicals is poor.
    As a result, there is roughly 10 million tonnes of chromium-6, also called hexavalent chromium, dumped in waste sites all across China, said Ma Tianjie, who heads the toxic campaign for Greenpeace in China, citing 2010 figures from the environment ministry.
    There are no estimates of total cases in China from this exposure.
    For now, the hill of chromium is a rallying point for a coalition of lawyers and Chinese environmental groups, who have filed a public interest lawsuit in a special environment court in the city of Qujing on behalf of the villagers like Wu.
    In a country where non-governmental organisations are historically treated with suspicion, such collective litigation by organisations with no government backing is unprecendented in China's special environment courts.
    The groups want the company to establish a 10 million yuan compensation fund for the restoration of the environment.
    The lawsuit was initially set to go on trial in November but was delayed until after Chinese New Year, which begins on January 23, due to the mountain of evidence and because the environmental groups needed more time and money to conduct a detailed assessment of the environmental damage, Ma Tianjie, s senior campaigner of Greenpeace, said the legal battle will set an example for similar cases in the future.
    "This is the first time a civil environmental protection organization can be recognized as the accuser in a public service case. This means that in the future if similar cases occur, environmental protection organizations or civil organizations can represent 'the nature', that is to say, represent those bodies with no voices or means to be acknowledged or seek for justice under the current judicial system," he said.
    Villagers said they had no idea about the lawsuit or seemed to have an inkling on their legal rights.
    But for many people in China's fledgling "civil society," the law has become a tool to promote environmental protection and to try to expand the rights of individuals in a one-party state.
    Their attempt to invoke the law more frequently to fight massive pollution problems in a country when corruption is rampant and big business powerful is tricky. So the case in Qujing will be a crucial test of which side will prevail.
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