No sure cure for China's soil pollution(2)

A HIDDEN PROBLEM

Soil pollution has grabbed the public's attention following the exposure of food safety scandals in recent years.

Last year, dangerous levels of cadmium were discovered in rice produced in Hunan Province. The pollution was caused by the non-ferrous metals industry in the area.

According to an official report issued jointly by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Land and Resources on April 17, about 16.1 percent of China's soil and about 19.4 percent of farmland are polluted.

It was based on a survey conducted from April 2005 to December of last year on about 630 square km of land across the country.

The report said the main pollution source is human industrial and agricultural activities.

"Compared with air and water pollution, soil pollution is more difficult to control and remedy, taking a much longer time and needing more resources," said Chen Tongbin, research fellow with the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Twenty years ago, almost no one knew about soil pollution, and even today, many people are not fully aware of the severity of the problem, he said.

According to Chen, soil pollution is more hidden than air and water pollution.

"When a piece of land is polluted, it is usually hard to discover and sometimes it takes as much as 50 years for the problem to be found," he said.