China's Toxic Boom - NYT

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"Much of China's economic boom has stemmed from foreign investment and international partnerhips. Hisun itself has become partners with the Drug Source Company, a distributor of generic drugs based in Westchester, Ill. The American company helped Hisun gain regulatory approval to make ingredients for a range of drugs, including the top-selling antitumor medication doxorubicin, used to treat cancer patients. The drugs sold in the United States are Hisun's most profitable product lines and are its fastest growing sources of revenue, according to reports it has filed as a publicly listed company.

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Yet one of Hisun's comparative advantages seems to be that it does not spend much money to treat chemicals that are byproducts of producing these drugs. Internal reports by local and national environmental investigators have found that each year, Hisun and other nearby companies release 3.6 million tons of water laden with organic and inorganic compounds that receive little or no processing. Yantou's shoreline is edged with sludge. Inland, the air is sulfurous. Fisherman say river water and seawater causes their hands and legs to become ulcerated, in some extreme cases requiring amputation.

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Until recently Cao Hongshai was a Hisun assembly-line worker who made a deworming medicine that the F.D.A. approved for sale in the United States. Ms. Cao said she used toluene, a toxic solvent, to produce the active ingredient in the drug. But she wore only a blue cotton uniform and worked in a room that had no special ventilation. Ms. Cao says she has not suffered health problems except for irregular perids. But two years ago she gave birth to a little girl who had stubs where eight of her fingers should have been.

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Ms. Cao and her husband, Lin Jianyong, sued Hisun for damages. A report submitted to the court by the government-run Medical Information Institute in Zhejiang Province found a 'clear correlation' between the child's defects and the chemicals used at Hisun. But local courts have consistently supported Hisun, and Mr. Lin and Ms. Cao have nearly exhausted the family's savings fighting the company."

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Much, MUCH more at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/international/asia/04CHIN.html

The scary thing is that China will make all the mistakes made by the already industrialized world but on a much bigger scale. Profit will triumph over the environment. Consumerism will bury environmentalism.

The first world could use the excuse that nobody ever thought much about the consequences of industrialization. The second and third world show no sign of taking steps that show that they had bothered to learn from the development of the U.S. and Europe.

Imagine 50 years hence after the Chinese and perhaps Indians have adopted the same habits we've displayed the past half-century.