No wonder we do not "Buy China" products. If it's not lead paint then it's polluted water and land use. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/w...land-is-polluted-state-report-finds.html?_r=0 A farmer in Hunan Province prepared to plant sweet potatoes late last year. Behind him is a smokestack at a lead factory.Credit Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times BEIJING — The Chinese government released a report on Thursday that said nearly one-fifth of its arable land was polluted, a finding certain to raise questions about the toxic results of China’s rapid industrialization, its lack of regulations over commercial interests and the consequences for the national food chain. The report, issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Land Resources, said 16.1 percent of the country’s soil was polluted, including 19.4 percent of farmland. The report was based on a study done from April 2005 to last December on more than 2.4 million square miles of land across mainland China, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. The report said that “the main pollution source is human industrial and agricultural activities,” according to Xinhua. More specifically, factory waste products, irrigation of land by polluted water, the improper use of fertilizers and pesticides, and livestock breeding have all resulted in tainted farmland, the report said. The study found that 82.8 percent of the polluted land was contaminated by inorganic material. The most common pollutants were cadmium, nickel and arsenic, and the levels of these materials in the soil had risen sharply since land studies in 1986 and 1990. The level of cadmium had risen by 50 percent in the southwest and in coastal areas and by 10 percent to 40 percent in other regions, Xinhua reported. The soil in southern China is more polluted than in the north. The report confirms spreading fears among many officials and ordinary Chinese that the country’s soil has been in severe decline. Its numbers also indicate a more serious problem than statistics did in a book published in early 2013 by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, “Soil Pollution and Physical Health,” which said one-sixth of China’s arable land, or nearly 50 million acres, was polluted. Officials have become increasingly vocal about the problem in the past year. In December, a vice minister of land and resources, Wang Shiyuan, said at a news conference that eight million acres of land across China, equal to the size of Maryland, were so polluted that farming should not be allowed on it. Hunan Province, in central China, has some of the worst soil pollution because it is one of China’s top producers of nonferrous metals. But it is also a large rice-growing area, producing 16 percent of the country’s rice in 2012, according to one market research company. Officials in Guangdong Province last year found that some rice had excessive levels of cadmium. Most of that rice was from Hunan. It is unclear how the findings released Thursday related to a national soil survey that, according to a news conference in December where Mr. Wang spoke, was done from 2007 to around the end of 2009. Those findings have never been released, with officials calling them a “state secret.” Some environmental advocates said the survey ended in 2010 and have sought its results. A version of this article appears in print on April 18, 2014, on page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: One-Fifth of China’s Farmland Is Polluted, State Study Finds.
Look at how much land in the U.S. is getting ready to go under BLM or Forest Service or DHS control...and the associated loss of grazing. Between China's polluted lands and our soon to be removed from use lands, seems like TPTB want to control us through starvation. Add to that the amount of land that's been withdrawn from small use prospecting for gold and it's downright disgusting! Kajun
It's really simple. Control the food, you control the people. (corollary would be poison the food, poison the people)
Russia kept the USSR under control by limiting the food. The USA was part and parcel to this by selling Russia food stocks. TEAM WORK, it's a killer.
Yet another reason I do not use ANY chinese food or personnel care products. My wife bought some asparagus spears in a jar I looked at the label made in china it went in the trash! I bought her some American asparagus next time at the store. If the chinese say 20% you can count on it being worse.
JUST 20%,??? Or is that the 20% that is Superfund site polluted....with the rest just 'slightly' polluted?
