Growing Public Unrest Leads China To Admit To 'Cancer Villages' 174
eldavojohn writes "A new report from China's environment ministry has resulted in long-overdue self-realizations as well as possible explanations for 'cancer villages.' The term refers to villages (anywhere from 247 to 400 known of them) that have increased cancer rates due to pollution from nearby factories and industry. The report revealed that many harmful chemicals that are prohibited and banned in developed nations are still found in China's water and air. Prior research has shown a direct correlation between industrialization/mining and levels of poisonous heavy metals in water. As a result, an air pollution app has grown in popularity and you can see the pollution from space. China has also released a twelve-year plan for environmental protection."
Lest we become hypocrites... (Score:5, Interesting)
Lest we become hypocrites...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory [wikipedia.org]
Re:Industrial revolution standard procedure (Score:3, Interesting)
I spent a few weeks in China with an anthropologist friend. We'd go to National Parks and preserves and such, only to find that someone had built a roller coaster or slide or some other tourist attraction in them. My friend explained that the Chinese culture doesn't have a particular appreciation for nature in its raw state; that rather than seeing "pristineness" as a virtue in itself, the Chinese kind of see it as a null state, such that a pristine area can always be improved by adding something to it.
Then again, other than freaks like Thoreau, most Americans weren't out hugging trees at the beginning of our Industrial Revolution either. We were busy chopping them down to build places to live out of them. (And anybody who knows the history of Niagara Falls can understand the idea of "cancer villages" quite easily...)