Reuters has this pretty lurid description of one of China’s biggest environmental problems—heavy metals pollution. China has stressed that its priority over environmental issues must be economic growth to relieve poverty among its vast population, and a bi-product of that is evidently to just kill a bunch of them.

The river’s flow ranges from murky white to a bright shade of orange and the waters are so viscous that they barely ripple in the breeze. In Shangba, the river brings death, not sustenance.

“All the fish died, even chickens and ducks that drank from the river died. If you put your leg in the water, you’ll get rashes and a terrible itch,” said He Shuncai, a 34-year-old rice farmer who has lived in Shangba all his life.

“Last year alone, six people in our village died from cancer and they were in their 30s and 40s.”

Cancer casts a shadow over the villages in this region of China in southern Guangdong province, nestled among farmland contaminated by heavy metals used to make batteries, computer parts and other electronics devices.

Every year, an estimated 460,000 people die prematurely in China due to exposure to air and water pollution, according to a 2007 World Bank study.

Yun Yaoshun’s two granddaughters died at the ages of 12 and 18, succumbing to kidney and stomach cancer even though these types of cancers rarely affect children.

Via Reuters and United Press International.

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

9 replies on “Don’t Go Anywhere Near the Water”

  1. Stories like this one are the reason I want to slap a Libertarian every time they squeal about the glories of the free market and limiting government oversight through the EPA and the FDA. If there was a god, those people would get cancer first.

  2. You know we’re the ones ordering all those batteries and computers and smart phones and everything up, right? We’re asking them to do this to themselves, and they’re doing it — happily, mostly — so we’ll send them money.

    See the wonderful, stunning movie ‘Manufactured Landscapes’ and marvel at the scale of the pollution of the Chinese nation and people.

    God knows we don’t want to be making that shit here.

  5. When you buy your iPhone and other disposable technology made in China and your pot or coke or crystal manufactured or refined in Mexico, you are sticking a giant pole right up the assholes of the people that live there and try to eke out a living.

  6. Right ’cause if I didn’t have an ipod they’d be growing organic chickens and making Sigg water bottles for each other. Why don’t you recycle your computer and then your bloated waste of a body?

  7. Every fucking time I walk into a discount store and see complex stuff being sold for two, three, four dollars and I think to myself someone has to be dying in order for shit like this to be made so cheaply. I cannot figure out it is can be worth putting some of this stuff together, shipping it here and selling it for just a few bucks. There are some things I swear are cheaper than 10-20 years ao.

  9. @1

    They think they live upstream, and upwind… of it all…

    In previous centuries, sure, rich folks could live on the upwind side of town, away from the stables, and the tannery, etc etc.

    I think it’s obvious those days are over, but… it’s not obvious to all.

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