Battle to clean China’s soil an uphill struggle
Print Edition
CHINA is facing an uphill struggle to combat soil pollution, with heavy metals, a lack of funding and loose supervision standing in the way.
Latest figures from the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Land and Resources show that about 16.1 percent of China’s surveyed land is polluted by heavy metals such as cadmium, arsenic, lead and mercury.
In addition, 19.4 percent of surveyed arable land had levels of pollution higher than the national standard, according to Minister of Environmental Protection Chen Jining. That means about 3.33 million hectares of arable land are not suitable for growing crops.
Soil pollution by heavy metals is especially severe in China’s central and southwestern areas, according to a 2014 report. The pollution has contaminated crops, leading to health hazards and fueling environmental concerns.
In Baiyin City in northwest China’s Gansu Province, the 38-kilometer Dongdagou River was once the biggest source of pollution on the upper reaches of the Yellow River, with tens of millions of tons of heavy metal waste pouring into the Yellow River each year.
Tests by Peking University showed that silt in the Dongdagou River contained levels of cadmium 2,200 times the national standard, while mercury was 2,000 times higher.
“At first it was adults who were losing their teeth. Then it was children,” said a resident. “Soon even goats that ate the grass near the river began to lose teeth.”
Last month, media reports claimed a link between soil pollution and students’ health in Changzhou, a city in east China’s Jiangsu Province.
Blood samples taken from students at Changzhou Foreign Languages School were said to have shown abnormal readings after the children moved to a new campus near the former site of several chemical plants. The abnormalities are suspected to be linked to soil contamination.
Due to waste from the past, a lack of money and inadequate supervision, soil pollution remains a headache, said Qin Xiansheng, an environment official in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Last year, the central government allocated 2.8 billion yuan (US$430 million) for anti-pollution projects in 30 prefecture-level cities, but experts say this is far from enough.
“Even with cheap restoration methods, it would take 300,000 yuan per hectare of land polluted by heavy metals, which means at least 6 trillion yuan is needed,” said Lan Hong, an environment professor at Beijing’s Renmin University of China.
An official in Guangxi told reporters that a good number of nonferrous metal companies don’t dispose of the waste they produce, instead leaving it to pile up and cause potential pollution.
“Meanwhile, many officials do not know much about standards, equipment or waste treatment methods in the nonferrous metal industry, making supervision quite inefficient,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Even though the situation is bad, at least one locality is seeing good results in treating contaminated soil.
Guangxi’s Huanjiang County was once home to heavily polluted soil but efforts since 2005 have seen more than 85 hectares of crop fields returned to normal in the country’s biggest soil restoration project.
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