Growing Public Unrest Leads China To Admit To 'Cancer Villages'

eldavojohn writes "A new report from China's environment ministry has resulted in long-overdue self-realizations as well as possible explanations for 'cancer villages.' The term refers to villages (anywhere from 247 to 400 known of them) that have increased cancer rates due to pollution from nearby factories and industry. The report revealed that many harmful chemicals that are prohibited and banned in developed nations are still found in China's water and air. Prior research has shown a direct correlation between industrialization/mining and levels of poisonous heavy metals in water. As a result, an air pollution app has grown in popularity and you can see the pollution from space. China has also released a twelve-year plan for environmental protection."

Comments

Industrial revolution standard procedure

[Gabrill]

I've maintained for years that China, Mexico, and similar countries going though industrial booms are simply in early stages of industrial revolution. Next we shall see environmental, wage, and health reforms, as these countries realize the need for sustainable management of their labor base.

Re:Industrial revolution standard procedure

[Luckyo]

Issue is that just because start of the road is the same for them, assuming that they will end up at the same goal is quite strange. East Asian countries have a very different culture, with very different approach to even most basic of things. Expecting them to end up at the same goal is rather ignorant to say the least.

Re:Industrial revolution standard procedure

[Synerg1y]

Ya, but it seems, the states & Europe got the best of the globe's tolerance for pollution, I don't think we can expect the same weather if every single country in the world goes through an "industrial revolution" adding to the accumulating pollution.

Re:Industrial revolution standard procedure

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Then again, other than freaks like Thoreau, most Americans weren't out hugging trees at the beginning of our Industrial Revolution either.

Bingo. This idea that "asian culture" is so different from "western culture" is just intellectually lazy. Sure there are differences, but fundamentally people are people, they all want the same stuff - food, air, water, sex, sleep, security, health, family, respect, creativity, etc.

The sort of reforms we saw that came in on the western industrial revolution aren't culturally specific, they are human-specific. The implementations will surely vary along with the timelines, but the end result will be the same because if it does not get to a similar point of satisifying universal human needs, it will collapse because the humans won't tolerate it indefinitely.

Re:Industrial revolution standard procedure

[icebike]

I've maintained for years that China, Mexico, and similar countries going though industrial booms are simply in early stages of industrial revolution. Next we shall see environmental, wage, and health reforms, as these countries realize the need for sustainable management of their labor base.

Actually, they are in the LATE stages of the industrial revolution (as any casual use of Google Earth would reveal). They are entering that state where increased disposable income and increased levels of education cause individual citizens making purchasing choices that drive the economy in a direction of more open-ness, more freedom, and more environmental responsibility. These people enter government and start working toward taking care of the environment.

Progress is slow, but this is exactly the predicted pattern that has been seen all over the world as prosperity and education increase, people start taking better care of their environment, investments, and themselves. Much of the west went thru this in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. You rarely hear of smog alerts in the US any more. They used to be common and long lasting in the past. You actually see clear skylines over most cities these days. Hell, even the Hudson river is recovering.

Low low Walmart prices

[Tailhook]

We are feathering our environmental nest at home and stocking our shelves from unregulated hell holes.

At some point this evacuation of our industrial base to China will emerge as a moral issue. It's already an employment issue for the working class and a fiscal issue for the nation, but neither of those seem to comfortable office people and the ruling class.

Maybe the shame of all this will.

Importing from regimes that do not have equivalent regulatory rigor is exploitation.

Re:Low low Walmart prices

[sjames]

There are many nations that are close enough. There's no need to seal our borders, just avoid the worst offenders, in particular the ones that have at some point introduced poison into the food supply.

Re:Lest we become hypocrites...

[Gabrill]

The problem isn't mismanagement. It's lack of management. Industrial oversight is not intuitive to new industrial booms, because the short term profit will always outweigh the long term unseen consequences until they come to light.

Re:Seen from space = BS

[WilliamGeorge]

You can't see clean air from space - it is clear. You can see heavily polluted air, though. The idea is that there are so many pollutants that the effect is visible on a large scale - you can see where it is heavier and where it is lighter (or completely not present, though I suspect little of China's populated area has truly clean air).

Still waiting..

[Daetrin]

Where's the explanation on how the free market is going to fix this problem without the need for burdensome regulation? Anyone? Anyone?

Re:Still waiting..

[Anonymous Coward]

No, government needs to do its job -- stopping people from wrecking what they don't own. The confusion is with you, not the libertarian concept.

Ironically, a fine use for democracy is determining how much pollution is fine. Too much, degrades life. Too much regulation, also degrades life by lagging development. During the industrial revolution, lifespans skyrocketted even as London choked with smoke.

Someone demanding a slowdown would have killed more than they would have saved.

If you take the position that people own the air on their property, and have the right to prohibit other people from dumping gases into the open air that get on that property, then anyone owning property has the right to prevent any combustion.

If you say, "the owner failed to secure your property against unwanted gases, their bad," then a corollary is I have the right to release nerve gas on my property next door to the 10 million dollar factory.

What most libertarians say is, " the guy owning the factory can pollute, and you can't release nerve gas, because in the first you are taking someone's property rights away to help the overall good." Then they say, "Taxing someone to pay for medical care for a condition made more likely by pollution is a violation the the taxed person's property rights."

The conclusion you have to draw is that the government can allow people to be killed for the overall good, and prevent people from exercising any self defense rights against polluters, but taxing people to prevent pay to death is a step too far. I do not follow this logic.