he Chinese government has admitted for the first time that so called ‘cancer villages’ exist, as decades of pollution take their toll on the health of Chinese citizens.
For years environmental campaigners in China have said that cancer rates in villages near factories and polluted rivers are far higher than they should be.
Now China’s Environment Ministry has admitted their existence and has called for greater transparency on environmental issues.
“In recent years, toxic and hazardous chemical pollution has caused many environmental disasters, cutting off drinking water supplies, and even leading to severe health and social problems such as ‘cancer villages’,” the document says, which was published in the 12th five-year plan for tackling pollution.
The plan also outlines a clampdown on the use of 58 types of toxic chemicals. Many chemicals are produced and consumed in China, which are banned in many developed nations.
The document continues to warn that China is facing a grave situation in terms of chemical pollution control, including a lack of pollution risk control by enterprises, a lack of policies to stop the use of highly toxic and dangerous chemicals and insufficient pollution monitoring by the authorities, the state news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.
According to a long-term study completed in 2011 by the Chinese Ministry of Environment Protection and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, over 90% of the groundwater in cities was polluted to different degrees. Of 118 major cities, 64 had seriously contaminated groundwater supplies. This is highly alarming, as 70% of China’s population relies on groundwater for their drinking water.
According to Greenpeace East Asia, 320 million people are without access to clean drinking water in China and 190 million people are drinking water severely contaminated with hazardous chemicals.
A national environmental safety survey, carried out between 2005-2006, showed that out of the 7,555 chemical and petrochemical projects surveyed, 1,354 were located on the banks and shores of rivers, lakes and reservoirs; 2,489 were next to densely populated cities or areas; 535 were on major tributaries of key rivers; and 280 were on the upper reaches of protected drinking water-source regions.
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