Toxic plant shut down, but Hunan village residents still dying
Residents of communities surrounding a shuttered heavy metal factory say cancer is endemic despite an official clean-up effort
The Xianghe Chemical plant in the farming town of Zhentou in Hunan province closed nine years ago, but every few months villagers living nearby add another name to their list of neighbours and friends who have died from heavy metal exposure.
Anyone able to move away did so years ago; only the elderly, the ill and the very young remain. Farmers dare not sell their crops - the soil is toxic and the rain is poison, they say.
Severe illnesses - hydrohepatosis, phthisis and the different types of cancer - no longer sound strange to us. We don't know who will be the next to add on the list of the sick or dead
"Do people elsewhere in the world really understand our suffering?" said Luo Jinzhi, 51, a resident of Shuangqiao village, which sits about a kilometre from the site of the plant. "Our throats, joints and kidneys hurt so much. Those severe illnesses - hydrohepatosis, phthisis and the different types of cancer - no longer sound strange to us. We don't know who will be the next to add on the list of the sick or dead."
Before the plant arrived, Shuangqiao had a population of about 1,000; villagers estimate about 300 live there now.
The plant opened in 2004, ostensibly to make an animal-feed additive, zinc sulphate, but in fact it produced indium - used in solar panels and liquid crystal displays. It discharged untreated effluent containing cadmium and indium, which poisoned wells and seeped into the soil of farmers' fields.
The metals cause digestive disorders and can trigger cancers. After a sustained local campaign by villagers that caught national attention, the plant was closed in 2009. The site was razed and the open storage pools filled in, but the rubble and the husks of a few structures are still there.
That same year officials admitted five people had died from cadmium poisoning, and medical examinations of people living within 1.2 kilometres of the site found almost 600 had been seriously affected by exposure to zinc and cadmium. Villagers say the true number of people dangerously exposed is twice or three times higher than the official number.