Rivers Run Black, and Chinese Die of Cancer

[Guest guest]

It is OK to report this by the NYT because it is a safe subject if it

is about China, but you will seldom see a report such as this about

any US polluters. F.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/international/asia/12china.html

 

September 12, 2004

THE GREAT DIVIDE | RURAL WASTELANDS

 

Rivers Run Black, and Chinese Die of Cancer

By JIM YARDLEY

 

HUANGMENGYING, China - Wang Lincheng began his accounting at the brick

hut of a farmer. Dead of cancer, he said flatly, his dress shoes

sinking in the mud. Dead of cancer, he repeated, glancing at another

vacant house.

 

Mr. Wang, head of the Communist Party in this village, ignored a June

rain and trudged past mud-brick houses, ticking off other deaths,

other empty homes. He did not seem to notice a small cornfield where

someone had dug a burial mound of fresh red dirt.

 

Finally, he stopped at the door of a sickened young mother. Her home

was beside a stream turned greenish-black from dumping by nearby

factories - polluted water that had contaminated drinking wells.

Cancer had been rare when the stream was clear, but last year cancer

accounted for 13 of the 17 deaths in the village.

 

" All the water we drink around here is polluted, " Mr. Wang said. " You

can taste it. It's acrid and bitter. Now the victims are starting to

come out, people dying of cancer and tumors and unusual causes. "

 

The stream in Huangmengying is one tiny canal in the Huai River basin,

a vast system that has become a grossly polluted waste outlet for

thousands of factories in central China. There are 150 million people

in the Huai basin, many of them poor farmers now threatened by water

too toxic to touch, much less drink.

 

Pollution is pervasive in China, as anyone who has visited the

smog-choked cities can attest. On the World Bank's list of 20 cities

with the worst air, 16 are Chinese. But leaders are now starting to

clean up major cities, partly because urbanites with rising incomes

are demanding better air and water. In Beijing and Shanghai, officials

are forcing out the dirtiest polluters to prepare for the 2008 Olympics.

 

By contrast, the countryside, home to two-thirds of China's

population, is increasingly becoming a dumping ground. Local

officials, desperate to generate jobs and tax revenues, protect

factories that have polluted for years. Refineries and smelters forced

out of cities have moved to rural areas. So have some foreign

companies, to escape regulation at home.

 

The losers are hundreds of millions of peasants already at the bottom

of a society now sharply divided between rich and poor. They are

farmers and fishermen who depend on land and water for their basic

existence.

 

In July and August, officials measured an 82-mile band of polluted

water moving through the Huai basin. China rates its waterways on a

scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being too toxic even to touch. This water was

rated 5. For fishermen, it may as well have been poison. " If I had

wanted to, I could have gone on the river and filled a boat with dead

fish, " said Song Dexi, 64, a fisherman in Yumin. " It was smelly, like

toilet water. All our fish and shrimp died. We don't have anything to

live on now. "

 

The Huai was supposed to be a Communist Party success story. Ten years

ago, the central government vowed to clean up the basin after a

pollution tide killed fish and sickened thousands of people. Three

years ago, a top Chinese official called the cleanup a success. But

the Huai is now a symbol of the failure of environmental regulation in

China. The central government promotes big solutions but gives

regulators little power to enforce them. Local officials have few

incentives to crack down on polluters because their promotion system

is based primarily on economic growth, not public health.

 

It is a game that leaves poorer, rural regions clinging to the worst

polluters.

 

" No doubt there is an economic food chain, and the lower you are, the

worse off your environmental problems are likely to be, " said

Elizabeth C. Economy, author of " The River Runs Black " (Cornell

University Press, 2004), a study of China's environment. " One city

after the next is offloading its polluting industries outside its city

limits, and polluting industries themselves are seeking poorer areas. "

 

China is facing an ecological and health crisis. Heavy air pollution

contributes to respiratory illnesses that kill up to 300,000 people a

year, many in cities but also in rural areas, the World Bank

estimates. Liver and stomach cancer, linked in some studies to water

pollution, are among the leading causes of death in the countryside.

 

" Over the past 20 years in China, there has been a single-minded focus

on economic growth with the belief that economic growth can solve all

problems, " said Pan Yue, the outspoken deputy director of China's

State Environmental Protection Administration. " But this has left

environmental protection badly behind. "

 

Too Poor to Flee, or to Get Well

 

Few places bear that out more than eastern Henan Province, which

includes Huangmengying. The isolated region has tanneries, paper mills

and other high-polluting industries dumping directly into the rivers.

 

One of the biggest polluters is the Lianhua Gourmet Powder Company,

China's largest producer of monosodium glutamate, or MSG, the flavor

enhancer. But the company's political influence is so vast that

environmental regulators who have tried to challenge the company have

done so in vain.

 

The Huai River basin has neither the history of the Yellow River nor

the mystique of the Yangtze. Yet the Huai, with its spider's web of

canals and broad tributaries, irrigates a huge swath of China's

agricultural heartland.

 

Farmers once spent lifetimes tilling the same plot of corn or wheat.

But in the past decade, millions of farmers, unable to earn a living

from the land, have left Henan for migrant work in cities, leaving

behind villages of old people and young mothers.

 

One of those mothers is Kong Heqin, 30, who was the last stop on Mr.

Wang's cancer tour in June. She stumbled into her dirt courtyard,

disheveled and groggy from an afternoon nap. Her face was bloated and

her legs were swollen. She had already had three operations for

cancer, and new tumors were growing in her large intestine.

 

Earlier in the year, doctors had prescribed chemotherapy. But

treatments cost $500 a series, nearly a year's income. She had

borrowed $250 to pay spring school fees for her two sons, and she

worried that chemotherapy would drain the family's meager resources

away from her children.

 

So she stopped chemotherapy.

 

" We've wasted so much money on medical treatment, " she said. " I think

the best thing would be to give up on it. "

 

Her rising medical bills were one reason her husband left a few years

ago for construction work in a northern metropolis, Tianjin. He

returns twice a year to plant or harvest crops. On good months, he

sends home $60, but Ms. Kong says months go by with nothing in the mail.

 

Her illness shapes family life. Her elderly mother tends her husband's

fields because she is too weak. Her sons wash the clothes. She grows a

ragged garden in her courtyard because the pesticides coating

vegetables at local markets make her sick. The plate of boiled eggs on

her dresser was a gift from sympathetic relatives.

 

Asked about pollution, she seemed confused, as if unaware of the

concept. But she has noticed that her well water smells bad and has

changed in taste. She knows that others are sick, too. " There's a

family next door with a case of cancer, " she said. " But they don't

like to talk about it. People here are scared to talk about these things. "

 

Epidemiological research for cancer in the Huai basin is scant. None

has been done in Huangmengying. Nor does any scientific evidence prove

that pollution is causing the rising cancer rate. What is clear is the

wide range of pollutants, from fertilizer runoff to the dumping of

factory wastes.

 

But Dr. Zhao Meiqin, chief of radiology at the county hospital, said

cancer cases in the area rose sharply after heavy industry arrived in

the 1980's and 90's. Before, the area had about 10 cases a year. " Now,

in a year, there are hundreds of cases, " she said, putting the number

as high as 400, mostly stomach and intestinal tumors. " Originally,

most of the patients were in their 50's and 60's. But now it tends to

strike earlier. I've even treated one patient who is only 7. "

 

Dr. Zhao said most cancer patients came from villages close to the

factories along the Shaying River, a major tributary in the Huai

basin. Mr. Wang, the village party chief, also said the highest

concentrations of cancer were found in the homes closest to the

village stream, which draws its water directly from the Shaying.

 

Polluters Hiding in Plain Sight

 

Health problems began appearing slowly in the early 1990's. Mr. Wang

said he learned that the water was severely polluted after an

environmental official came on a personal visit. Farmers also began

complaining that their fields were producing less grain because of

polluted irrigation water.

 

Today, pollution corrodes daily life here. Farmers too poor to buy

bottled water instead drink well water that curdles with scum when it

is boiled.

 

Xiao Junhai is 57 but looks two decades older. In June, he shivered

under a quilt in a dark room, summer flies flitting at his head,

cancer knotting his stomach. He could not lift himself from his crude bed.

 

" I grew up drinking the water here, and I still drink it, " he said. " I

don't know what pollution is, but I do know it means the water is bad. "

 

His daughter, Xiao Li, 24, anguished over the dilemma that her

father's illness had thrust upon her. She says her father takes

traditional Chinese remedies and eats rice porridge because the family

cannot afford treatment. If she returned to her migrant job on the

coast, in Hangzhou, she might earn enough money to pay for it. But no

one else can care for him. So she has stayed.

 

" The water in the river used to be clean, but now it's black and

changing colors all the time, " she said. " The water is being destroyed. "

 

The Lianhua Gourmet Powder Company is based in Xiangcheng, upstream

from Huangmengying. It is the area's largest employer, with more than

8,000 workers, and the largest taxpayer in Xiangcheng.

 

For Henan Province, Lianhua Gourmet is a signature company, the

biggest producer of MSG in China. An analysis by a Chinese credit

rating service, Xinhua Far East, found that in 2001 the factory

produced more than 133,000 tons of MSG and has plans to raise

production to 200,000 tons.

 

Under any circumstances, the company's sheer size would translate into

significant political clout. But Lianhua, basically, is the

government. Lianhua is traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, but

according to the credit analysis, its majority stockholder is a

holding company owned by the Xiangcheng city government.

 

This type of government-controlled enterprise is not unusual in China,

but the potential for a conflict of interest is glaring. The

production of MSG leaves potentially harmful byproducts, including

ammonia nitrate and other pollutants that are supposed to be treated

to meet environmental standards.

 

A damning report last year by the State Environmental Protection

Administration blamed local officials for lax enforcement. The report

said Lianhua had dumped 124,000 tons of untreated water every day

through secret channels connected to the Xiangcheng city sewage

system. The water eventually flowed into the Shaying River, almost

quadrupling pollution levels.

 

" This constitutes a grave threat to the lives and livelihoods of

people downstream, " the report stated.

 

Officials at Lianhua did not respond to repeated written and telephone

requests for interviews. Neither did officials in Xiangcheng nor with

Henan Province.

 

But one retired local Communist Party official said party cadres had

always protected Lianhua. He said a son-in-law of a Lianhua chief

executive once even headed the city's environmental protection bureau.

 

" There are a lot of officials who don't care about pollution, " said

the official, who asked not to be identified. " Some leaders are just

interested in making money. "

 

He said the company often broke promises about cleaning up. " What they

said and what they did were different things, " he said. " They even

said they would stop production if they weren't able to meet pollution

standards. But they never did that. "

 

A Stream of Black Water

 

This June, a reporter saw a noxious liquid flowing from a waste outlet

into a stream near a Lianhua factory on the outskirts of Xiangcheng. A

sign above the outlet said, " Lianhua Company, No. 3 Waste Outlet.''

Another sign said the outlet was under the oversight of the city

environmental bureau. The acrid smell was so strong that it was

difficult to stand nearby.

 

Less than a mile downstream from the waste outlet, Wang Haiqing

watched his seven goats chew on weeds. Mr. Wang lived on the other

side of the stream, in Wangguo, and said several neighbors had

contracted cancer or other intestinal ailments. He said his goats

vomited if they drank from the blackened water.

 

To reach clean drinking water, he said villagers must dig wells 130

feet deep. Most cannot afford to do so.

 

" It's been so polluted by the MSG factory, " said Mr. Wang, 60. " It

tastes metallic even after you boil it and skim the stuff off it. But

it's the only water we have to drink and to use for cooking. "

 

The rains of June in Huangmengying had given way to boiling humidity

by the middle of August. Mr. Wang, the village chief, wore shorts and

sandals as he again walked beside the village stream. He said four

more people had died since June, two of cancer.

 

But much had also changed in the two months.

 

The 10th anniversary of the government's promise to clean up the Huai

had become a major embarrassment for the Communist Party. Roughly $8

billion had been spent to improve the basin, but the State

Environmental Protection Administration concluded this year that some

areas were more polluted than before.

 

China's press, often given freer rein on environmental issues,

published critical articles over the summer. The newspaper operated by

the State Environmental Protection Administration blamed local

officials for allowing powerful companies, including Lianhua, to

continue polluting. Even tiny Huangmengying got attention: a crew from

state television visited in July. Officials, fearing a humiliating

exposé, hurriedly started digging a deeper well for the village.

 

But the gesture was dwarfed by what Henan officials did for Lianhua.

 

For more than a year, the company had been in financial trouble,

suffering from bad investments and a slowdown in the MSG market. For

months, banks pressured it for roughly $217 million in unpaid loans.

 

The Henan Province government stepped into the breach. The Henan

governor, Li Chengyu, organized a meeting at Lianhua headquarters in

July to devise a plan to save the company. The Henan government also

gave the company more than $25 million.

 

" The government is confident and the business is confident that

Lianhua Gourmet can be brought around, " Mr. Li said, according to the

Chinese financial press. " The banks should support Lianhua Gourmet. "

 

The signal was clear. Henan's government would make certain Lianhua

survived.

 

In Huangmengying, Mr. Wang again visited Ms. Kong, the young mother

with cancer, who was also struggling to survive. Her resolve in June

to forego chemotherapy had withered with her health by August. She was

pale and coughing as she explained that she had again borrowed money

for more treatment. She would leave in a few days.

 

But it meant that she could not pay her sons' school fees for the fall

semester. Her husband could not find work and had no money to send.

And the friends who had loaned her money said they could loan her no

more. " I'm scared, " she said.

 

Only an hour earlier, Mr. Wang had been walking to visit Ms. Kong when

a woman rushed toward him and knelt in a formal kowtow, touching her

lips against the dirt. Her husband had dropped dead. Doctors had

examined the body and discovered a tumor. She needed Mr. Wang to help

with funeral arrangements. He asked where she and her husband lived.

 

In a small brick hut, about 50 yards from the village stream, answered

the woman, Liu Sumei.

 

Ms. Liu, 50, led Mr. Wang to a friend's home, where her husband's body

lay in a coffin under a large poster of Mao Zedong.

 

Ms. Liu had not known her husband had cancer, only that he was in poor

health. But in Huangmengying, she said, poor health is not unusual.

" Every family has someone who is sick, " she said. " All the neighbors. "

 

Chris Buckley contributed reporting for this article.

 

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