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Follow us on TWITTER: http://twitter.com/cnforbiddennews Become a Fan on FACEBOOK: http://on.fb.me/g1SJNo Some of China's farmland has been contaminated y heavy metal due to excessive mining enabled by the lack of government control. Experts say that such mining exploits small and medium-scale mines at the cost of the natural environment. Some polluted land will take 100 years to recover. On Feb 22, China Economic Weekly revealed the severity of heavy metal pollution in farmland caused by excessive mining. Gejiu, a county-level city Yunnan Province, is known as 「tin city」. With a population of more than 450,000, Gejiu's tin reserves at over 900,000 tons account for 1/3 of the national total and 1/6 of global stock. Due to the lack of government control, as people profit from this natural bounty, the accompanying toxic heavy-metal arsenic produced in the mining process is left untreated, causing cancer among residents. As a result, the average life expectancy of Gejiu is less than 50 years. Local residents have to purchase water and vegetables hundreds of miles away. Research data released by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research shows that 1.167 million tons of arsenic produced in mining has been discharged into China's environment by 2008. In 2001, a tailing dam in Guangxi's Huanjiang Maonan Autonomous County collapsed in a major flood. The floodwater laced with heavy metals inundated fields along the 100-kilometer Diaojiang River. By 2004, 60% of the contaminated land was not yet farmable. Experts worry, if the polluted water entered the Pearl River system, hundreds of millions of people would be affected. The environment will take 100 years to recover. Other areas including Human, Sichuan, and Guizhou also suffer from heavy metal pollution. China's Ministry of Land and Resources estimated, each year 12 million tons of grain in the country was contaminated, enough to feed 40 million people. Luo Zhongwei, a researcher with the Institute of Industrial Economics, believes local government, which was given the power to ratify the exploitation of small and medium-scale mines by the CCP central government in 1980s, should be held accountable for the chaotic situation in the country's mining industry, which is ill regulated and lacks overall planning. Exposed mining waste is another source of pollution. In Gejiu, hundreds of thousand tons of arsenic waste has been left uncovered and untreated for decades. The heavy metals are absorbed by crops through water and soil pollution, causing local produce to contain arsenic 100 times over the safety level. A scientist told China Economic Weekly that he was invited to examine the heavy metal pollution in one of China's major grain production areas. He was shocked by the result and gave the report to a senior official, who said, the situation is serious. But we can do nothing about it. Please don't tell others that I've read the report. Investigation reveals that several scientific reports by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research may have been covered up. Such reports showed severe arsenic contamination in Guangdong's Liannan, Guangxing's Nandan, and Hunan's Changning, Changde, and Chenzhou. Arsenic concentration found in crops in those areas was hundreds of times over the national safety level. However, both the Hunan National Grain Quality Control Center and the Hunan Grain and Oil Products Quality Control Station denied that any test on heavy metal contamination in crops was ever conducted. NTD reporters Zeng Yaoxian and Zhou Ping。 其他推荐: 《神韵》2011世界巡演新亮点 http://www.ShenYunPerformingArts.org/ 《九评共产党》全球多语种文本下载 http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/4/12/13/... 达拉斯艺术名流盛赞神韵 http://www.ntdtv.com/xtr/gb/2010/12/2...