The Chinese government has acknowledged the existence of 鈥渃ancer villages鈥�: areas where rates of cancer are unusually high, probably because of industrial and agricultural contamination of drinking and irrigation water.
The reference to the cancer clusters was in China鈥檚 first ever five-year plan for environmental management of chemicals, released on 20 February. The Chinese media, , said it links water pollution to 鈥渟erious cases of health and social problems like the emergence of cancer villages in individual regions鈥�.
The term has caught on over the past few years as the media in China and elsewhere reported on apparent cancer hotspots. It gained prominence in 2009 when a journalist plotted 40 of them . Some reports .
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According to recent data, . The disease now accounts for 25 per cent of deaths in cities and 21 per cent in rural areas. However, people in China , compared with 29.9 per cent for people in the US and 26.3 per cent in the UK.
One 鈥渢ypical cancer village鈥�, as it was called by , had between 80 and 100 deaths from cancer over five years in a population of only 1200.
But proving a link between pollution and cancer requires more detailed evidence, says , an epidemiologist at the University of Sydney and science adviser to Cancer Council Australia. However, Driscoll also says it doesn鈥檛 really matter 鈥� if there is dangerous pollution anywhere, it should be cleaned up.
And that is the plan. China鈥檚 has drawn up a list of 58 chemicals that will be tracked with a registry, including known and suspected carcinogens and endocrine disrupters. Before the end of the 2015, they will subdivide the list into chemicals to be eliminated and those to be reduced.
Big shift
Creating a plan to eliminate some chemicals is a big shift, says Yixiu Wu, a campaigner based in Beijing, who says even committing to controlling these chemicals would have been a step forward.
The ministry鈥檚 acknowledgement of the problem is 鈥渞eally important and it is another reflection of the government鈥檚 shift towards more transparency in pollution information,鈥� says Sabrina Orlins from the , a non-profit body in Beijing.
鈥淚ncreased environmental information leads to increased public awareness where people can have the chance to exert pressure on big water polluters to adopt clean-up measures and be more accountable,鈥� she says.
That accountability is where the five-year plan is lacking, says Wu. 鈥淚t is still a question whether the government is willing to release all the information about the factory locations and their environmental risk,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t is very important for people who are living nearby.鈥�
Wu says the motivation to develop the plan comes from an increasing awareness of the human cost of pollution as well as the country signing up to several international conventions designed to curb pollution.
