MCLC: fear for soil and food

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: fear for soil and food
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (12/30/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/world/asia/good-earth-no-more-soil-pollut
ion-plagues-chinese-countryside.html

Pollution Rising, Chinese Fear for Soil and Food
By EDWARD WONG 

CHENJIAWAN, China — The farm-to-table process in China starts in villages
like this one in the agricultural heartland. Food from the fields of Ge
Songqing and her neighbors ends up in their kitchens or in the local
market, and from there goes to other provinces. The foods are Chinese
staples: rice, cabbage, carrots, turnips and sweet potatoes.

But the fields are ringed by factories and irrigated with water tainted by
industrial waste. Levels of toxic heavy metals in the wastewater here are
among the highest in China, and residents fear the soil is similarly
contaminated. Though they have no scientific proof, they suspect that a
spate of cancer deaths is linked to the pollution, and worry about lead
levels in the children’s blood.

“Of course I’m afraid,” said Ms. Ge, in her 60s, pointing to the
smokestacks looming over her fields and the stagnant, algae-filled
irrigation canals surrounding a home she shares with a granddaughter and
her husband, a former soldier. “But we don’t do physical checkups. If we
find out we have cancer, it’s only a burden on the children.”

With awareness of China’s severe environmental degradation rising, there
has been a surge of anxiety in the last year among ordinary Chinese and
some officials over soil pollution in the country’s agricultural centers
and the potential effects on the food chain. In recent years, the
government has conducted widespread testing of soil across China, but it
has not released the results, adding to the fear and making it more
difficult for most Chinese to judge what they eat and pinpoint the
offending factories.

An alarming glimpse of official findings came on Monday, when a vice
minister of land and resources, Wang Shiyuan, said at a news conference in
Beijing that eight million acres of China’s farmland, equal to the size of
Maryland, had become so polluted that planting crops on it “should not be
allowed.”

A signal moment came in May, when officials in Guangdong Province, in the
far south, said they had discovered excessive levels of cadmium in 155
batches of rice collected from markets, restaurants and storehouses. Of
those, 89 were from Hunan Province, where Ms. Ge farms.

The report set off a nationwide scare. In June, China Daily, an official
English-language newspaper, published an editorial
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2013-06/14/content_16621389.htm>
saying that “soil contaminated with heavy metals is eroding the foundation
of the country’s food safety and becoming a looming public health hazard.”

One-sixth of China’s arable land — nearly 50 million acres — suffers from
soil pollution,according to a book published this year
<http://www.amazon.cn/__/dp/B00B7T792A> by the Ministry of Environmental
Protection. The book, “Soil Pollution and Physical Health,” said that more
than 13 million tons of crops harvested each year were contaminated with
heavy metals, and that 22 million acres of farmland were affected by
Pesticides.

But the government has refused to divulge details of the pollution,
leaving farmers and consumers in the dark about the levels of contaminants
in the food chain. The soil survey, completed in 2010, has been locked
away as a “state secret.”

“We think it’s always the right of the public to know how bad the
situation is,” said Ma Tianjie, an advocate at Greenpeace East Asia who is
researching toxic soil. “The Chinese public can accept the fact that our
environment is polluted. The important thing is to give them the means to
challenge polluters and improve the environment, and not just keep them in
the dark.”

There has been some acknowledgment of the problem by top officials. In
January, the State Council, China’s cabinet, announced that it would set
up systems to comprehensively monitor soil pollution by 2015 and promote
pilot projects for treatment.

Scholars say soil pollution is especially acute in Hunan Province, China’s
rice bowl. In 2012, Hunan produced 17 million tons of rice, 16 percent of
the national total, according to one market research company
<http://zszy.askci.com/about/>.

The province is also one of China’s top producers of nonferrous metals. As
a result, it is the leading polluter of cadmium, chromium, lead and
nonmetal arsenic, according to data collected in 2011 by the Institute of
Public and Environmental Affairs, a research group based in Beijing.

That year, the province was responsible for 41 percent of the nation’s
cadmium pollution when measured by its presence in industrial wastewater;
the number has not dropped below 30 percent since 2004, when the data were
first collected by the group. The wastewater is discharged in rivers,
where it flows into irrigation channels.

“There’s this pressure from the central government on Hunan to maintain a
high level of yield for rice production,” said Mr. Ma, the Greenpeace
program director. “On the other hand, rice production never gives you the
same kind of G.D.P. growth that industrial development gives you.”

Hunan’s abundance of raw metals has led to a push by provincial Communist
Party leaders to develop mining and smelting there further, leaving
officials caught in what Mr. Ma calls a clash of two imperatives: “They
have to feed the country with their rice, but they want to grow their
economy.”

Among the heavy metals seeping into Hunan’s crops, the worst may be
cadmium, which at high levels has been linked to organ failure, weakening
of bones and cancer, scientists say.

“Cadmium has a tendency to accumulate in the kidney and liver,” Chen
Nengchang, a scholar at the Guangdong Institute of Eco-environment and
Soil Sciences. “When the accumulation reaches a certain point, it will
pose a serious health risk for the organs.”

Cadmium that accumulates in rice plants gets not only into the rice on
China’s tables, but also into animals’ meat, since the husks are fed to
farm animals. There is no public data, though, that shows the level of
cadmium pollution in food.

Increasingly, Chinese news organizations are reporting on clusters of
villages that have high rates of cancer, raising questions about the
potential link between cancer and various forms of pollution. Some
scientists are now conducting studies.

In July, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Pollution published
some findings from a study that drew a direct connection between pollution
of the Huai River, which crosses several provinces in central China, and
high rates of cancer among people living by the river.

Here in Hunan, and particularly in this area administered by Hengyang
City, which includes Ms. Ge’s village, stories of cancer are common.

One woman in the village of Liujiacun said her husband had died in his
late 50s of liver cancer. “He didn’t do heavy labor, didn’t smoke, and he
would drink only a little bit,” said the widow, who gave only her surname,
Li.
As in nearby villages, crops here appear wilted, and the village well is
clogged with green muck. These were all sharp changes from Ms. Li’s
childhood, she said.

Twenty people live in Chenjiawan now, down from a population of about 100
in 2007, most of them elderly, Ms. Ge said, adding that many recent deaths
had been from cancer.

There is no public data drawing a direct connection between these cases
and the factories that loom over the farmland. But a 2009 study published
in a Chinese journal said that the area’s main crops were “at a high risk
of heavy metal contamination,” and that only less than half could be rated
“secure” or “good.”

Chinese farmers “have such a profound connection with the land,” said Mr.
Chen, the Guangdong soil scientist. “Since China’s household registration
system makes it difficult for them to relocate to other areas, there is a
sense of fatalism, and they accept whatever comes their way.”

That sense of futility ripples throughout central Hunan. In one part of
Hengyang, a mound of industrial waste that has destroyed adjacent farmland
has drawn outraged comments from villagers on the Internet. But they
expect no action because the nearby factories are tied to local officials,
villagers said in interviews.

“There’s no way to close these factories because of local protectionism,”
said one farmer, Wang, who wanted to be identified only by his surname for
fear of retribution.

For Hunan officials, the mines and factories around Hengyang are central
to maintaining the province’s leading role in the production of nonferrous
metals, essential for industrial processes like the manufacture of
lead-acid car batteries. “It’s difficult to lobby against those
companies,” said Sun Cheng, a spokesman for Green Hunan, an advocacy group.

Hunan officials are eager to expand the nonferrous metals industry. In a
development plan for the five years ending in 2015, officials have pledged
to increase the industry’s revenue by an annual rate of 18 percent, and
have approved 80 new projects that have a total investment of under $10
billion.

Given the nationwide health risks, some environmental officials in Beijing
have praised recent experiments done by scientists that show certain
plants could help clean the soil by absorbing poisons. Still, there has
been no sign of action on the State Council’s announced goal for
comprehensive monitoring and treatment of soil pollution. Many farmers
working their ravaged lands remain fearful and fatalistic.

“You’re born on this earth, you grow up on this earth, and you can’t do
anything about it,” Ms. Ge said, sitting in an alley next to a pail of
carrots. “Those who are most vulnerable have died. We’re still here
wasting away.”

Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Patrick Zuo
contributed research from Beijing and Chenjiawan.