Pasting below an interesting article from China. I am sure the pollution situation is similarly alarming in many of India's industrial and urbanized locations.
Thanks,
Ranjan
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The Poison Eaters of Gansu Province
Pollution is not a problem some western farmers can choose
to ignore, as many say they have suffered from chronic bone pains for decades
By staff reporter Liu Hongqiao
(Beijing) -- 03.01.2013 - Barely any rainfall on a bone dry
landscape has always made crop farming in the western province of Gansu a rough
gamble between the sky and local irrigation policies. But now, farmers reap
only sorrow from fields that experts say is severely contaminated with cadmium
and other heavy metals.
A survey conducted between 2006 to 2010 by the Ministry of
Environmental Protection (MEP) and the Ministry of Land and Resources is
believed by many soil pollution experts to be the most comprehensive inspection
of China's land pollution to date. But the central government has refused to
release the results of the survey, on grounds that the information is an issue
of national security. In 2006, the MEP stated roughly 10 million hectares of
farmland had been contaminated by heavy metals, including 2.2 million hectares
of land affected through water pollution.
One farmer named Wu Zonglu said land experts that visited
from Beijing declared that the soil in his village of Miqin to be hazardous. He
said they told him that eating produce farmed from the soil was tantamount to
suicide.
Heavy metals are absorbed in the stomach and stored in the
bones. The cadmium moves slowly – so slowly that when Wu began to feel bone
pains two decades ago, no one thought it would eventually take over his thigh
bones and then his lower back. His wife has suffered more – she can hardly hold
her hands outstretched.
Caixin found that people in dozens of villages along the
Dongdagou, the biggest canal for sewage discharge in Baiyin City have
complained of similar health problems for decades. The canal is used as a
dumping ground for local factories and streams across 200 hectares of land.
When villagers visit the hospital, they are diagnosed with osteoporosis or
hyperostosis. But they've never received an official medical explanation as to
why so many people suffer from the same set of ailments.
The descriptions of the bone pain echo one of the most
prominent cases of mass cadmium poisoning, which occurred in 1950s Japan. An
illness called the "itai-itai," or the "ouch-ouch" disease
in Japanese, in Toyama Prefecture, was eventually traced to the consumption of
rice containing excessive levels of cadmium. Crops irrigated with polluted
water led to contaminated food.
Some government researchers openly deny the existence of
"itai-itai" in China. Shang Qi, a research fellow at the Chinese
Center for Disease Control and Prevention has been following health problems
caused by land pollution for more than 20 years. He says that while soil
contamination is a problem, there are no studies that have confirmed
large-scale cadmium poisoning.
In many of China's arid regions, wastewater is used for
irrigation. According to a national survey on irrigation water quality conducted
in the 1980s, 86 percent of irrigation water was substandard. The study also
found that 65 percent of wastewater used for irrigation contained excessive
levels of heavy metals, including mercury and cadmium. Soil experts say that
the use of wastewater for irrigation is still a widespread practice.
Meanwhile, the bone pains have hit almost everyone in Minqin
village and all of the villagers share the same description of the disease. The
pain can come at any time of the year. Villagers describe a coldness that comes
to the joints, which then spreads to the rest of the body.
Source: http://english.caixin.com/2013-03-01/100496199.html
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