generalspeaking

"Mother Is Sick"

"In recent years, toxic and hazardous chemical pollution has caused many environmental disasters, cutting off drinking water supplies, and even leading to severe health and social problems such as "cancer villages", reads a document that the government itself has produced in China.

 Its mea culpa over its failure to realize its responsibility to protect the country's environment, to halt the casual spill-over from industrial pollution sending hazardous chemicals into the air, the seas, the ground.

It is not that China has an absolute lack of environmentally concerned protesters. It is that governments at every level have been disinterested in hearing their impassioned pleas that regulations must be imposed and must be policed to ensure that groundwater not be poisoned, that arable lands not be corrupted, that the atmosphere not be polluted.

Even where the evidence is stark and overwhelming, government took pains not to notice. Other than on occasion to call for a one-day shut-down of coal-fired furnaces to attempt to relieve some of the worst environmental excesses where dark, particulate-laden smog invaded peoples' lungs, and made the atmosphere so heavily oppressive that the sun could not shine.

Riverways, lakes and canals where municipalities draw their domestic water supplies are so stark full of debris and detritus from factory waste that the water has become completely unpotable, presenting risks to human health beyond the capabilities of quick chemical fixes.

It is estimated that as much as ten percent of farmland is polluted, producing contaminated, inedible grains to the value of billions lost.

"Air pollution is more apparent because very day we have the weather forecast. Air pollution is more frequently reported. Soil pollution needs more attention. Soil receives pollution and stores it. It is very hard to detoxify it or remove it", explained Pan Genxing, soil pollution expert from Nanjing Agricultural University.

"Since ancient times, Chinese people have described the land as their mother. Now, mother is sick", wrote a Chinese magazine in a cover story entitled "The unbearable weight of the soil."

Labels: China, Controversy, Environment, Health

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, February 23, 2013