China says one-fifth of its farmland is polluted with toxic metals

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#1
China says one-fifth of its farmland is polluted with toxic metals

AP AP APRIL 19, 2014 2:37PM

FACED with growing public anger about a poisonous environment, China's government released a study that shows nearly one-fifth of the country's farmland is contaminated with toxic metals, a stunning indictment of unfettered industrialisation under the Communist Party's authoritarian rule.

The report, previously deemed so sensitive it was classified as a state secret, names the heavy metals cadmium, nickel and arsenic as the top contaminants.

It adds to widespread doubts about the safety of China's farm produce and confirms suspicions about the dire state of its soil following more than two decades of explosive industrial growth, the overuse of farm chemicals and minimal environmental protection.

It also points to health risks that, in the case of heavy metals, can take decades to emerge after the first exposure. Already, health advocates have identified several “cancer villages” in China near factories suspected of polluting the environment where they say cancer rates are above the national average.

The soil survey was conducted from 2005 until last year, and showed contamination in 16.1 per cent of China's soil overall and 19.4 per cent of its arable land, according to a summary released late on Thursday by China's Environmental Protection Ministry and its Land and Resources Ministry.

“The overall condition of the Chinese soil allows no optimism,” the report said. Some regions suffer serious soil pollution, worrying farm land quality and “prominent problems” with deserted industrial and mining land, it said. Contamination ranged from “slight,” which indicated up to twice the safe level, to “severe.”

The report's release shows China's authoritarian government responding to growing public anger at pollution with more openness, but only on its own terms and pace. Early last year, Beijing-based lawyer Dong Zhengwei had demanded that the government release the soil findings, but was initially rebuffed by the environment ministry, which cited rules barring release of “state secrets.”

That led to criticism from the Chinese public, and even from some arms of the state media. The Communist Party-run People's Daily declared that, “Covering this up only makes people think: We're being lied to.” The ministry later acknowledged the information should be shared, said Dong, who attributed this week's release of the report to public pressure.

Without a release of the information, “the public anger would get stronger, and soil contamination would deteriorate, while news of cancer villages and poisonous rice would continue to spring up,” Dong, an antitrust lawyer, said in an interview on Friday.

Because some of the samples in the survey, which is the first of its kind in China, date back nearly a decade, the results would likely be much worse if tests were taken today, Dong said.

He said the government should conduct soil surveys and release the results on an annual basis and respond with immediate remediation measures.

China's leaders have said they are determined to tackle the country's pollution problem, though the threat to soil has so far been overshadowed by public alarm at smog and water contamination. However, recent scandals of tainted rice and crops have begun to shift attention to soil.

A key concern among scientists is cadmium, a carcinogenic metal that can cause kidney damage and other health problems and is absorbed by rice, the country's staple grain.

Last May, authorities launched an investigation into rice mills in southern China after tests found almost half of the supplies sold in Guangzhou, a major city, were contaminated with cadmium.

In early 2013, the newspaper Nanfang Daily reported that tens of thousands of tons of cadmium-tainted rice had been sold to noodle makers in southern China since 2009. It said government inspectors declared it fit only for production of non-food goods such as industrial alcohol but a trader sold most of the rice to food processors anyway.

The worst pollution detailed in this week's report centres around the country's most industrialised regions, the Yangtse and Pearl River deltas in southern China, as well heavily industrial portions of the northeast.

The summary of findings gave no detailed breakdown of contamination by region. It said most of the contaminated soil had levels of pollutants ranging from just above the allowable limit to double the limit, while for 1.1 per cent of the country's soil the contaminants were at five times the safety limit or more.

Lu Yizhong, a soil contamination expert at China Agricultural University, said soil surveys must become more frequent, with detailed results published regularly. More legislation is needed to control the problem, he said.

Warning that food safety was emerging as a “thorny issue” for China, Lu said the effects of the gradual accumulation of toxic metals in the bodies of people who eat contaminated produce can take years to unfold. “Sometime it can take 10 to 30 years to develop serious disease.”

China must step up efforts to monitor and regulate soil contamination “otherwise the speed of new contamination will surely outpace efforts to rein it back,” he said.

AP
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#2
http://www.todayonline.com/chinaindia/ch...se-its-air

China’s water is even worse than its air
BY
BLOOMBERG EDITORS
PUBLISHED: APRIL 25, 4:13 AM(PAGE 1 OF 1) - PAGINATE
In recent months, Chinese leaders have pledged drastic steps to clear their nation’s smog-choked air. The bigger question, though, may be how far they are willing to go to clean up its water.

Say one thing for the lung-burning pollution that regularly blankets Beijing and other cities: At least everyone can see the problem. In contrast, a recent benzene spill that poisoned the water supply of Lanzhou — a city of more than two million people — was terrifyingly odourless and colourless. If anything, polluted water poses a more insidious threat to Chinese people than dirty air does.

Seventy per cent of the groundwater in the heavily populated north China plain has become unfit for human touch, let alone drinking or irrigation. Because the area encompasses several of the country’s largest farming provinces, crops and livestock are exposed to dangerous contaminants as well. The nine in 10 Chinese who say they are highly concerned about the safety of their food and water have reason to be alarmed.

The authorities have shown they can restore blue skies, at least temporarily, as they did during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Cleaning up China’s water will be more difficult, time-consuming and expensive. Industries that pollute water are not concentrated in a few places, as coal-fired power plants are, but spread out across thousands of localities. And dirty water is harder to assess than gritty air; discharges have to be measured near the source. In any case, industry accounts for only half of water pollution. The rest comes from millions of small farmers and livestock producers, whose fertilisers, pesticides and waste runoff leach undetected into the water table.

COMPREHENSIVE REFORMS NEEDED

The sheer scale of the problem demands root-and-branch reforms — the kind that Chinese academics and activists have long promoted, but the government has been reluctant to make. A new environmental law, for instance, may include tougher penalties: Violators who ordinarily pay cheap fines and then continue to pollute would be subject to daily, unlimited penalties and possible criminal charges. However, this law is in its fourth draft and still undergoing revisions, and there is no guarantee the stronger penalties will survive to the final version.

Even if they do, they will be of little use unless China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) is given greater power. As things stand, so many agencies have a say in environmental oversight, it is almost impossible to take strong, swift action.

Groundwater monitoring alone is overseen by three different ministries, as China Water Risk, a non-profit watchdog based in Hong Kong, points out, and this makes enforcement slow and ineffective. Talk of merging ministries or responsibilities into the MEP has so far gone nowhere.

Another barrier to progress is that many officials remain uncomfortable enlisting ordinary citizens and environmental groups in the battle against pollution — something that, given how broad the problem is, could be critical to success.

The authorities have allowed local journalists and environmental activists to expose some polluters. However, they are wary of protests against specific factories, or even civil lawsuits. Last week, a court ruled that residents could not sue the city’s water supplier over the spill in Lanzhou.

Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group Holding now offers US$10 (S$12.60) handheld kits that buyers can use to test their local water, then upload the data to a digital map. Such information could greatly aid the task of naming and shaming offenders — and it is precisely the sort of transparency the government needs to encourage, not restrict.

Chinese leaders understand the scope of the challenge, and they have said they will spend almost two trillion yuan (S$400 billion) to combat it. They have made local officials responsible for preserving the environment as well as promoting economic growth, which should encourage more determined enforcement efforts.

Officials have talked about introducing tiered pricing for water usage by industries, while raising discharge standards and fees. They are also encouraging the consolidation of small farms into bigger, more efficient plots that use less fertiliser.

However, China’s water problems are too big and too dangerous to leave any weapons lying on the table.

Northern China already confronts a drastic scarcity of water and pollution further reduces the supply.

Chinese leaders should worry less about what may happen if they unleash regulators and the public on polluters, and more about what will happen if they do not. BLOOMBERG
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#3
From the Financial Times. The full article can found on their website.

Whether it is pollution or corruption, China is tackling the problem. They have to, in order to realize the China Dream.

China law change opens way to huge fines for polluters

China has passed long-delayed revisions to an environmental law that will allow more punishing fines for polluters, removing what many saw as a major barrier to cleaning up the country’s poisoned air, water and soil.
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