One way to measure the cost of growth is in lives. Please consider China’s "cancer villages" bear witness to economic boom.
One needs to look no further then the river that runs through Shangba to understand the extent of the heavy metals pollution that experts say has turned the hamlets in this region of southern China into cancer villages.
The river’s flow ranges from murky white to a bright shade of orange and the waters are so viscous that they barely ripple in the breeze. In Shangba, the river brings death, not sustenance.
"All the fish died, even chickens and ducks that drank from the river died. If you put your leg in the water, you’ll get rashes and a terrible itch," said He Shuncai, a 34-year-old rice farmer who has lived in Shangba all his life.
"Last year alone, six people in our village died from cancer and they were in their 30s and 40s." Every year, an estimated 460,000 people die prematurely in China due to exposure to air and water pollution, according to a 2007 World Bank study.
Cancerous Waters
Here is the first image of a 10-image set of a slide show on cancerous waters.
A lake near Da Bao Shan in the northern part of China’s Guangdong province turns reddish brown after the water was contaminated for years August 27, 2009. It is highly unusual for people to contract cancer at tender ages, but not in the villages around Da Bao Shan, one of China’s largest mine that produces lead, zine, cadmium and other heavy metals.
Lead Poisoning Concerns
Inquiring minds are reading Lead poisoning latest China safety concern.
China’s environmental protection minister has called for more effective measures to tackle heavy metal poisoning, state media said on Thursday, as anger grows among parents with children poisoned by lead.
Incidents of lead poisoning have dogged China’s heavy metal bases in Shaanxi, Hunan, Henan and Yunnan provinces, leading to temporary closures of smelters after protests by parents angry at their children’s illnesses.
- In August, more than 800 children living near a Dongliong Group-run lead smelter in Shaanxi province showed high levels of lead poisoning, with 174 admitted to hospital. Angry that the plant had not been fully shut, parents attacked it on
In 1996, Karen Ho got a job on Wall Street. The student of anthropology, who would later go on to get her Ph.D., was fascinated by how even in the midst of an economic boom, corporate downsizings were rampant — and how each time a company announced a major layoff, its stock rallied. What she found from her perch at Bankers Trust — and later in interviews with people at firms such as Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Salomon Brothers, Kidder Peabody and Lazard — was that it wasn’t just an ideological commitment to boosting shareholder value that drove decisions to merge, break up and restructure companies, but also the work culture of Wall Street itself. Ho, now a professor at the University of Minnesota, talked with Barbara Kiviat about her findings, presented in Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, and how she thinks the recent financial collapse has — or hasn’t — changed things.
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