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Page added on April 17, 2014
China’s soil: How polluted is it?
A nationwide investigation has shown that as much as 16 percent of China’s soil contains higher-than-permitted levels of pollution, the environment ministry said on Thursday.
China is desperate to tackle the impact of rapid industrialization and urbanization on its food supplies, with the aim of maintaining self-sufficiency and reducing its dependence on grain imports amid soaring demand.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a notice posted on its website (www.mep.gov.cn) that its long-awaited soil survey involved samples taken across 6.3 million square kilometers (sq km) of land, two-thirds of the country’s total.
“The survey showed that it is hard to be optimistic about the state of soil nationwide,” the ministry said.
“Some regions are suffering from relatively heavy pollution, the quality of soil in planting areas is worrying, and the problem of waste from industry and mining also stands out.”
The ministry found that 82.8 percent of the contaminated samples contained toxic inorganic pollutants, including cadmium, mercury, arsenic, chromium and lead.
It blamed agricultural production and other “human activities” for the contamination, which it said had been accumulated over the long term.
The ministry said China is working on a series of measures to help resolve the problem of soil pollution and would also speed up the drafting of related legislation.
China announced last week its first pilot project to treat heavy metal in soil in Hunan province, the site of a scandal last year involving the contamination of rice by cadmium.
7 Comments on "China’s soil: How polluted is it?"
Northwest Resident on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 7:50 pm
China ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Just wait until they bring those 300 new coal-burning power plants online, which they are determined to do. By the time the 300th plant goes live, the only people left living in China will have adapted to sucking heavy metal pollutants from the soil with elongated lips for nutrition and will have developed a special set of gills to filter out all the air pollution — but yeah, they’ll still be human.
noobtube on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 9:24 pm
Why in the world do Americans and Europeans care about China’s soil when they have their own soil problems to fix?
I keep forgetting.
If Americans and Europeans can’t piss on China (or Africa or South America or the Middle East and etc. etc. etc.), then they have to look at their own, ruined lands.
When I saw the source of this “news” story, it became all too clear.
Davey on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 10:35 pm
Noob climb back in your hole!
DC on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 10:37 pm
Exactly my thoughts noob. China does indeed have a problem-serious ones. But ‘our’ soil is also laced with heavy metals, lead, arsneic, PVC residues and so on. We have dead zones in all 3 all coasts now, etc etc. All reuters had to do, to maintain the pretense of some sort of honesty, was add a line to the effect. ‘While Chinas problems are severe, North American soils are just as heavily polluted etc etc’-anything like that. Otherwise, like you say, it comes off sounding like ‘China’ is somehow unique when it comes to industrial-ag pollution-when in fact, its the ‘west’ that got there first.
Kenz300 on Fri, 18th Apr 2014 12:11 am
The people in China are starting to voice their concerns about the air, land and water pollution around them. Social media has allowed people to band together for a louder voice.
The government has set an ambitious plan to increase the amount of renewable energy sources every year.
They have also begun shutting down some of the worst polluters.
They have a long way to go to clean up their environment but they have begun. It will be interesting to see how quickly they can clean up what took decades to pollute.
It seems like the government is starting to address the pollution complaints of the people and is coming down more forcefully on the polluters.
Welch on Fri, 18th Apr 2014 1:06 am
Is it even possible to clean soil?
Makati1 on Fri, 18th Apr 2014 2:13 am
DC, the US lead the world in pollution for decades. Acid rain was killing the trees until they finally realized that they had to stop or kill everything down wind of coal fired electric plants. Lead pollutes the soil near any road that has existed before they banned it as a fuel additive. Every river bottom is laced with every chemical known to mankind. Ditto the fields that have been over fertilized with chemicals, sprayed with pesticides and flooded with herbicides. Our homes are also polluted with the same chemicals used to ‘clean’, kill pests and get rid of those unsightly weeds in that lawn. No, the US is far ahead of the Chinese in pollution. We had a 100 year head start. It’s just that Chinese and Russia bashing is the current target of our psychopathic leaders.