INTRODUCTION
Economical and industrial development are two of the most important elements on the evolutional way for any country and nationality. However, it often happens so that people discover something new and hurl themselves into using it before making throughout estimations of potential risks and hazards. This is especially common if such newly discovered entity (an invention, or mineral, or a way to dig out minerals – this could be anything) is capable of making large sums of money: then there is no particular doubt of this entity becoming incredibly popular and exploited to the extent of being overused. To top it all, there are thousands of hazardous entities, and if a country wishes to achieve a certain level of development quickly, it is sure to use as many of them and in as short amount of time as it is humanly possible. As a result, all these entities intertwine in ways impossible to anticipate, and all together become one large lump of problems for both humans and environment. To phrase it differently, on their run for power, people often tend to choose ways that are of a great harm to the planet and to themselves, but are faster and more sufficient than any safer way: it is a run for money that will potentially wipe out the entire human civilization. This certainly is a case for China, and the results of it have already become visible: the non-existence of air quality, water pollution, deforestation, increased cases of cancer – the list goes on and on. This particular paper is meant to present a research on the issue of cancer villages in the Chinese province of Guangdong.
OUTLOOK FOR THE PAPER
The importance of this topic cannot be overestimated, because it is clear that these villages are not called ‘cancer villages’ for their bad aura – the environment is polluted there to the extent of people having outbreaks of cancer times more frequent than anywhere else in the world. At first, the overall information on the Guangdong Province will be presented with its location, population, geographical traits, industrial complexes etc. in this research. Then, the notion of cancer villages will be presented with a close examination of it, statistics, types of contaminants, and some plausible explanations as for why there areas have become polluted in the first hand. Lastly, conclusions will be drawn with the overview of this problem, and its prospects for the future. In all that, several empiric articles will be used, and each one will be titled and cited respectfully.
GUANGDONG PROVINCE
Guangdong is the most southern province of the mainland China. It is a valuable trade center for the whole South China, has one of the longest coastlines among all provinces. Capital city is located at the head of the Pearl River Delta, and called Guangzhou (Canton). Guangdong province is surrounded by the South China Sea to the south and southeast, Zhuang Autonomous Region of Guangxi to the west, Fujian province to the northeast, and by the provinces of Hunan and Jiangxi to the north. It is one of the most economically and industrially developed provinces.
Relief. Guangdong’s relief is rather diverse: the hefty majority of its land is composed on rounded hills, and all of that being intertwined with alluvial valleys and cut by streams and rivers. It is separated from the Yangtze River by the Nan Mountains, which have had a large historical impact on the development of the land, as it did exist in a fair independence from the rest of mainland China. From Fujian and Zhejiang provinces stretch Southern Uplands – they constitute the major part of eastern relief in Guangdong. Longitudinal valleys run from northeast to southwest surrounding the capital city of Guangzhou (Canton). Level land is located primarily in the alluvial deltas near the South China Sea. About 70% of the total land in province are covered with low hills, and the vast majority of peaks range somewhere from 1,500 to 2,500 feet, with only few surpassing the 5,500 feet mark (Chang, C., Yueman Y., Falkenheim, V. C.).
Drainage. The Pearl River Delta is one of the most important water sources in this area. It measures approximately 2,900 square miles, has hills outlying it and possesses a distinct mark of numerous canalized channels and distributaries that have in them somewhere around 1,500 miles of length in total (Chang, C., Yueman Y., Falkenheim, V. C.). The delta itself is a convergence of the Xi, Bei, and Dong rivers – the three major ones in the Xi River system. All of them are rain-fed, and have extreme seasonal fluctuations. In spite of being only about half a size of the Yellow River (Huang He), the Xi system discharges six and a half times as much water annually (Chang, C., Yueman Y., Falkenheim, V. C.).
Outside the Pearl system, the Han River is the most important one, and other such rivers are located mostly in the southwest. Overall, there are around 1,300 large and small rivers in the province of Guangdong. The middle and lower courses of most of these rivers are being severely polluted since 1990s, due to large quantities of untreated sewage and wastewater that are beings discharged into them from the province’s rapidly developing urban and industrial areas (Chang, C., Yueman Y., Falkenheim, V. C.).
Climate. Guangdong lies within zones of tropical and subtropical climates, as it is located in the south of the Tropic of Cancer. Summer temperatures in the Xi River valley (82 to 86 °F in July) are little different from those in the lower Yangtze and on the Huang He, which cannot be said about the average temperatures in winter, as they are much higher here: from 55 to 61 °F in January (Chang, C., Yueman Y., Falkenheim, V. C.). True winter never occurs in Guangdong, and the length of summer varies from around 10 months in the southern part of it to 6 months in the northern. As frosts are rare in the level ground, two crops of rice can be grown.
The highest peak of rainfall occurs in the summer, as the season of rains starts from mid-April, and lasts somewhere until mid-October. In numbers, Guangdong’s annual rainfall is around 60 to 80 inches (this number decreases with distance from the coast to the northwest, and increases with altitude and influence from the summer monsoon winds); the driest period lasts from December to February, while more than half of all total precipitation falls between June and August (Chang, C., Yueman Y., Falkenheim, V. C.). The latter is also the period of time when Guangdong is in its season of typhoons, which consequently usually leads to downpours and land destruction.
Soil. Because of high summer temperatures and amount of rainfall, soils are quite poor in Guangdong, with most of them being severely exposed to both bleaching and leaching. The vast majority of this area is covered in mature red soils, and the rest belongs to highly bleached mixture of young and old red soils. Lateritic soils are usual in the wettest and hottest zones, but they too are prone to erosion and require constant and throughout irrigation. Yellow soils can be found in the wettest and coolest areas of Guangdong.
Population and Settlement Trends. Population of Guangdong has been growing dramatically since 1980, mainly because of how many people work in the factories on the coast, and due to the increased number of in-land immigrants who spent half of their year working in the province.
Villages ate the basic functional units in the countryside, and around two-fifths of the province’s population live there (Chang, C., Yueman Y., Falkenheim, V. C.). Almost all villages and cities are located along rivers, deltas and watersheds, it often happens so the life of a whole village depends solidly on one particular river in the area, as it is vital for raising cattle, irrigating soil. In the cities, water is important for factories and other such industrial units, which inevitably leads to a conflict of interests: water becomes contaminated with heavy metals and chemical pollutants from the factories, and then runs towards the villages, where people have to use it, as they have no other way of growing food.
CANCER VILLAGES
Cancer village is a community where rates of cancer deaths occurring in its population are in considerable excess (at least twice higher) as compared to the normal death rate of 6 per 1,000/year in the rest of China (McBeath, J. H., McBeath, J., Tian, Q., 2). It is difficult to state the exact number of such villages, because there has not yet been a complete and throughout study on the issue due to how reluctant the Chinese government is to admitting the very existence of it. It is said, however, that there are cancer villages in every province of China except for Qinhai and Tibet: Chinese academics and media state that there are about 459 cancer villages in total (Kaiman, J.). Authors of the article Environmental Pollution, Cancer Villages and the State’s Response disagree with such number, and state that there has to be at least 500 of such places across the country (McBeath, J. H., McBeath, J., Tian, Q., 2).
Nonetheless, it is evident that the number of cancer outbreaks in China correlates strongly with its industrial development. The reason for why they are called ‘cancer villages’ and not ‘cancer cities’ is relatively simple: cities are more expensive, cities already struggle with severe air pollution, and cities rebel. Therefore, governments force factories to move to the countryside (which they often do gladly, because there is far less pressure there, and it is easier to find workers as people living in the Chinese villages are poor and tend to migrate seasonally to the industrially developed areas in their search for jobs anyway).
Moving forward, factories relocate to villages. What happens next is a normal process: they usually locate near the watersheds, as water is an important aspect of many industries. This would not be of any issue, it this process was somehow regulated by the government. However, this is not a case in China. Adrian Brown from SBS has investigated several remote villages in China on the matter. His findings are truly shocking: people die of cancer in terrifyingly large numbers, both children and adults struggle to survive, families go bankrupt trying to save their loved ones, and all of it due to the untreated waste that is dumped directly into the local rivers, and also because of the waste piles that are stored near locations where locals grow food (Brown, A.). With the soil being already contaminated, people have to use water for irrigation, making the matter even worse – which cannot be omitted, there is simply no other way for them to survive (as it has been stated previously, many communities rely solidly on their local streams and rivers for agriculture, raising cattle, and for other means of domestic water consumption). This issue is hardly ever discussed, because local entrepreneurs have strong connections with the government in such areas, which consequently grants them with untouchability, and causes people to struggle with no hope for the future (Brown, A.).
Yingru Li et al in their article Spatial Assessment of Cancer Incidences and the Risks of Industrial Wastewater Emission in China have made a throughout research on the issue, looking closely into connections between the area contamination, its type, and cancer that prevails there. They state, that the appearance of cancer villages is related to the economic reform in 1978, and China’s rapid economic growth (Li, Y., Li, H., Liu, Z., and Miao, C., 2). Water pollution is said to be the major cause, as water is polluted severely with arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb): all categorized by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as having high carcinogenic toxicities (Li, Y., Li, H., Liu, Z., and Miao, C., 2). Giving examples, researchers state that, lead and mercury can permanently damage the nervous system and brain, cadmium and arsenic have toxic effects on the liver, lung, kidney, skin, etc. (drinking water contaminated with arsenic has been known to cause of skin, bladder, and lung cancers) (Li, Y., Li, H., Liu, Z., and Miao, C., 2). The situation with pollution is true to the vast majority of provinces around China, but is the most severe in arias of particular industrial and economic development.
In 2008, the Ministry of Health published the Report on the Third National Review of Sample Investigations of Causes of Death, revealing that deaths from cancer in Sihui and Zhongshan (Guangdong province) were respectively 8.95 times and 6.49 times the national average between 2004 and 2005 (Chinadialogue, 8). Various areas are polluted differently in Guangdong: in Dongguan, for instance, the main concern is air pollution due to the increasing number of cars and factories in this area. The 2008 report of the Hong Kong, Guangdong and Pearl River Delta regional air quality monitoring network, jointly issued by Guangdong Environmental Monitoring Center and Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department, showed that in the Nancheng district of Dongguan, there were only 31 good air quality days in a year, which is the worst record in the Pearl River delta, and because of the compilation of residential, commercial and industrial facilities, the number of bad air quality days can reach up to a 162 days in a year (Chinadialogue, 9-10).
As for the soil contamination, a research was carried out jointly by the Guangdong provincial government and the China Geological Survey under the Ministry of Land and Resources. However, they did not release any relevant data neither for the level of contamination, nor for which chemicals are distributed in which areas. Thankfully, Zhou Yongzhang, a professor in the Earth Sciences Department of Sun Yat-sen University, published a paper in the December 2008 Environmental Sciences Journal, entitled “Multivariate Geostatistics and GIS-based Approach to Study the Spatial Distribution and Sources of Heavy Metals in Agricultural Soil in the Pearl River Delta, China”. By the information stated there, concentrations of copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd) and mercury (Hg), were beyond the soil background content in Guangdong province, concentrations of cadmium and mercury were particularly high (about 30 % of soil examined had more mercury than the country’s Grade II standard) (Chinadialogue, 11). Such level of soil contamination suggests that crops grown in it are contaminated as well, which, crowned with the air quality and water pollution creates conditions that make living in many rural and urban areas of Guangdong province extremely unsafe.
Shangba village is probably the most known cancer village in the world. It is located downstream from the Dabaoshan mine, which has been mining iron, copper, lead, zinc and other metals since the early 1960s (Chinadialogue, 16). People are forced to drink water that is contaminated with these metals, and there is virtually nothing they can do. Even the fact of the government and the Dabaoshan Mining Company having jointly issued to build the Shangba reservoir does not save the situation: when the rainy season hits, water in the reservoir becomes muddy due to miscalculations with the village’s drainage system, and the people of Shangba have to switch back to drinking the highly contaminated water. Soil is also polluted, but there is very little information on the matter – it can only be suggested that it is highly contaminated with cadmium, just like the water is.
CONCLUSION
Chinese strive for development has been going hand in hand with the failing status of its environment. Major industries tend to shift towards the rural areas due to the freedom it promises and the cheapness of its work force. They mostly locate on the rivers and streams, near the local villages. Because of peculiarities of the Guangdong province, and its strong reliance on the sources of water, this area struggles from severe pollution that comes from factories and other industries dumping untreated chemical waste (including various heavy metals) in water and leaving large piles of chemical waste untreated around villages in the area. As a result, such thing as ‘cancer villages’ has occurred, and it is a major problem in Guangdong. Unfortunately, prospects of it getting better are very slim, because the Chinese government has now an objective of becoming a superior economic area, with little concern about the state of environment. If this remains, the compilation of cancer villages in China will soon comprise itself into one big Cancer Country of China, and consequences of this happening will be terrible for the country as well as for the rest of the world.
Works Cited
Brown, Adrian. "China's Cancer Villages." SBS Dateline. SBS. 15 May 2012. Television. Published in YouTube by SBS Dateline on May 15, 2012. Web. 17 Jan. 2017.
Chang, Chen-tung, Yue-man Yeung, and Victor C. Falkenheim. "Guangdong Province, China." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1 Nov. 2016. Web. 17 Jan. 2017.
Chinadialogue. Report on Environmental Health in the Pearl River Delta. Published by German Asia Foundation in cooperation with chinadialogue and the “EU-China Civil Society Dialogue on Participatory Public Policy”. June 2011. ISBN 978-3-933341-51-8.
Kaiman, J. “Inside China’s ‘cancer villages’.” The Guardian. June 4, 2013. Web. 17 Jan. 2017.
Li, Yingru, Huixuan Li, Zhongwei Liu, and Changhong Miao. "Spatial Assessment of Cancer Incidences and the Risks of Industrial Wastewater Emission in China." Sustainability 2016, 8, 480. Web. 17 Jan. 2017.
McBeath, J. H., McBeath, J., Tian, Q. “Environmental Pollution, Cancer Villages and the State’s Response”. Presented to the annual meeting of the American Association for Chinese Studies, meeting in Arlington, VA, October 10-12, 2014.
