Pollution Rising, Chinese Fear for Soil and Food
Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times
A farmer worked her land in
the shadows of a lead factory in Hengyang, Hunan province, where
scholars say soil pollution is especially acute.
By EDWARD WONG
Published: December 30, 2013 179 Comments
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.
Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times
Surrounded by industrial waste at a huge dump site in
Hunan Province, farmers scavenge daily for recyclable materials to
sell.
Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times
A pool of water behind a lead factory in the heavily
industrial Shuikoushan area of Hengyang City, where pollution is high.
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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 physic
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
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
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.
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.”
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