China's "Cancer Villages" Pay The Price For Breakneck Deveopment - BBC

[hatrack]

The small hamlet of Shangba is a tiny jumbled collection of houses sitting in the lush green paddy fields and hills of southern China. It sounds idyllic, but many of the locals are dying after drinking polluted water.

Shangba has become one of the country's growing number of what have been called "cancer villages". A broad river runs to the side of the village, its shallow waters rippling over smooth stones. In the past the villagers relied on the river for drinking water, and to irrigate their crops. What they did not know was that mines further upstream were dumping their waste into it. And they're still doing it, there is a thick red residue at the water's edge. Walk along the little paths that wind their way through the paddy fields outside the village and many of the streams that you pass are a rusty orange colour.

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For many villagers it is too late. One campaigning Chinese newspaper said 250 people from the village's population of 3,000 have died of cancer since 1987, although statistics in China are often unreliable.

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The government has promised to take action. Last year it pledged to spend billions of dollars to bring clean water to 160 million farmers by 2010. But that would still leave many more without fresh supplies. The reality is that the government it having to play catch-up. For the past three decades successive administrations have put economic growth ahead of the environment.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6271103.stm