(Ecns.cn)--A village in Inner Mongolia, near China's Yellow River, has been plagued by cancer. Villagers pass away in their 40s or 50s and single men find it hard to get married because few women dare move into that village. Arsenic, a cancer-causing chemical, was found in the nearby soil and underground water.
Heavy metal pollution, caused by pollutants such as arsenic and zinc, is tormenting not only Inner Mongolia but other areas in China, including Hunan Province and Liaoning Province. Pollution is being transferred from air and water to soil, posing a major threat to health and food safety.
"Historically, heavy metal contamination of soil has been getting worse," says to Zhang Jianxin, an official with the Hunan Province State Land and Resources Department (SLRD).
Underground water is being contaminated by heavy metals in the soil of the Hetao plain of Inner Mongolia, where illnesses caused by arsenic poisoning and fluorine poisoning are not uncommon. Almost 300,000 residents face the threat of arsenic poisoning and over 2,000 people have been sickened by it in the Hetao plain, a region in the upper reaches of the Yellow River in northwestern China.
"Medical records of 70,000 people show that the number of cases of both bone cancer and bone pain has risen over a time span of 25 years, from 1965 to 2005," said Zhang, the official with the Hunan Province SLRD. In Zhuzhou, a city in east Hunan, the percentages of cadmium in the blood and urine of the local residents are two to five times that of the normal level.
In Huludao, a coastal city in the northeastern province of Liaoning, the primary source of pollution is from zinc factories. The main pollutants include cadmium, lead, and zinc.
"The Huludao Zinc Factory, built in 1937, severely harms the health of local residents," said Huo Chunhua, the head of a neighborhood across street from the factory. He was referring to the "blue smoke" emitted from the factory, which makes it hard for people to breathe.
Last year, 14 residents from the neighborhood passed away and six died of cancer. The first five months of this year have witnessed five deaths, two of which were from cancer. The youngest among the deceased were all in their mid-forties.
"Since 2003, the zinc company has promised to compensate the residents but the promise has never been fulfilled," Huo from the neighborhood said. Local representatives have repeatedly called for the relocation of the entire community, but the local government said there is nothing they can do about it.
"Despite efforts in conducting surveys at contaminated regions, the results of the surveys have failed to attract enough attention from local governments," said Wang Xikuan, senior engineer with the Geological Survey Institutive of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
For example, their surveys found that the diamine fertilizers that contain a large amount of fluorine have a high risk of adding more fluorine to the soil and crops in the Hetao plain area. Researchers have advised authorities to produce fertilizers with low fluorine content and direct farmers to use those fertilizers. So far, the advice has been completely ignored.
"The preservation of soil quality requires both government support and scientific research," said Jiang Qiutao from the Hunan Food and Drug Administration. "The government needs to make further investments into large remediation projects and relocation projects," added Jiang.
The key to preventing heavy metals from contaminating soil lies in curbing local governments' urge to blindly pursue high GDP growth, according to environmental experts. The next five years will still see rapid development of China's industrialization and urbanization. If local governments cannot reprioritize their goal, it will be very tough to mitigate heavy metal pollution.
Experts say that China's main sources of heavy metal pollution are the chemical industry and mines. Since the mid-1980s, the soil of major heavy metal production provinces, including Yunnan, Guangxi, and Hunan, have become contaminated due to the unsustainable development of China's mining industry plus the lack of environmental protection awareness and investments into environmental protection.
A total of 12 million tons of crops are contaminated each year, resulting in a direct economic loss of over 20 billion yuan, says the Ministry of Land and Resources.
