At least 20 factories in the Tianjin area of China, south-east of
Beijing, are continuing to operate even though the municipal
authorities have ordered them to close because they are creating
dangerous pollution.
Villagers in Liukuaizhuang and Xiditou maintain that officials, because
they live in the unaffected city of Tianjin, are turning a blind eye.
The results of the pollution are cancer rates 20 to 30 times the
national average, leading to the communities being labelled ‘cancer
villages’.
The father of a five-year-old boy with leukaemia said: ‘there is no way
out for us. We are still drinking the water. Where do we get the money
to buy mineral water?’
A victim support centre at the China Politic and Law University, which
has been studying the problem, has tried to help the residents to sue,
but the courts will not accept the cases. Villagers say municipal
officials are managing to cover up the evidence by persuading doctors
in the area to stay silent about the link between the pollution and the
cancer rates.
At Liukauizhuang independent studies have shown high levels of
bacteria, fluoride and hydroxybenzene, a carcinogenic form of benzene,
in the water. At Xiditou black sludge has been pouring out of a
factory’s plastic pipes on to a riverbank.
The problems have mainly arisen since China’s economic revolution began in the
1980s and state owned factories were privatized. The Tianjin problem is the latest to
be investigated by the university unit. The researchers say they are
looking at 70 cancer village cases but cannot estimate how many Chinese
communities are affected altogether.
