Notable case, Shangba (Wengyuan County), Guangdong, China
Dabaoshan Mine and Shangba village
大宝山矿 / 上坝村
A large iron, copper and zinc mine in northern Guangdong and the rice-farming village downstream that irrigates with water from the river receiving its discharges. Shangba is one of China's best-known "cancer villages" and the site of a trial of cadmium phytoextraction using rice.
At a glance
- Status
- Remediation under way
- People affected
- 3,300 (2010)2
- Media
- soil, surface water, sediment, living organisms
- Kind of site
- mining
- Area. The map point is Shangba village; the mine lies about 16 km upstream along the Hengshi River.
- People affected. Inhabitants of Shangba (Pure Earth, 2009–2010 project page).
Contaminants
Status
Remediation under way
The mine is still operating. Blacksmith's pilot project in Shangba is closed (2009–2010). According to Wikipedia more than one billion yuan was invested in 2020 in soil remediation and better mining processes; the results were not checked for this record.
Story
The Dabaoshan mine, owned by the state company Guangdong Dabaoshan Mining, has produced iron and copper for more than forty years (as of 2013) and was once China's largest zinc mine; it extracted about 850,000 tonnes of iron ore and 6,000 tonnes of copper ore a year. Wastewater and sludge go into the Hengshi River: in the rainy season about 80% of the water in the tailings pond bypasses treatment.
Shangba, with about 3,300 inhabitants, grows rice and sugar cane with that water. In the paddy soils copper, zinc, lead and cadmium exceed Chinese agricultural standards; in rice grain lead and cadmium exceed the permitted limits (Zhuang and colleagues, 2009). Lead in well water was measured at fifteen times the national limit. Since 2007 the press has called Shangba the "village of death" because of its high cancer incidence.
In 2009 the Blacksmith Institute (now Pure Earth) started a pilot project on soil and irrigation water with the Guangdong Institute of Eco-Environment and Soil Sciences; it closed in 2010.
Timeline
- 2005Nengchang Chen, of the Guangdong institute, begins research in Shangba.
- 2007The press starts calling Shangba the "village of death".
- 2009July: Blacksmith picks the Guangdong institute as local partner and the pilot project starts.
- 2010End of the pilot phase.
- 2020More than one billion yuan invested in soil remediation and mining processes (Wikipedia).
Health
Pure Earth reports that health surveys show a very high local incidence of cancer, without giving figures. Zhuang and colleagues (2009) calculate that intake of lead and cadmium from local rice and vegetables exceeds recommended allowances.
Remediation
- 2009water treatment pilotPilot treatment of irrigation water by polymer precipitation, pH correction with limestone or slag and biological treatment in a wetland; cadmium in the treated water met national standards (Pure Earth).
Plants and fungi at this site
PhytoremediationField pilot, 2009–2010
Oryza sativa
Pilot project by the Blacksmith Institute with the Guangdong Institute of Eco-Environment and Soil Sciences (Nengchang Chen) in the paddies of Shangba. To take cadmium out of the soil a Japanese rice variety that accumulates more of it than average was grown ("choukokoku" in the source); alongside, silicate fertiliser was applied to lower cadmium availability in the soil. The contaminated harvest was meant for metal recovery and biomass energy, not for eating.
Outcome Pure Earth reports a 5–8% yield increase on treated soils compared with contaminated controls. The sources read give neither the amount of cadmium removed from the soil nor the reduction in rice.
- Daobaoshan Mine (project page), pureearth.org, 2010
- The Toxic Rice Fields of China's Cancer Villages, pureearth.org, 2013
From the literature
Species that acted on one of this site's contaminants in at least one study. The list is automatic and takes no account of this site's soil, concentrations or climate.
Plants
- Agrostis capillarisCommon bentEvidence: field
- Arabidopsis halleriHaller's rockcressEvidence: field
- Cannabis sativaIndustrial hempEvidence: field
- Festuca rubraRed fescueEvidence: field
- Noccaea caerulescensAlpine pennycressEvidence: field
- Populus albaWhite poplarEvidence: field
Fungi
- Funneliformis mosseaeEvidence: greenhouse
- Rhizophagus irregularisEvidence: greenhouse
- Paxillus involutusBrown roll-rimEvidence: greenhouse
- Aspergillus nigerBlack mouldEvidence: laboratory
- Mucor circinelloidesEvidence: laboratory
- Suillus luteusSlippery jackEvidence: laboratory
The rest are on the contaminant pages.
Nearby
Sources
- Daobaoshan Mine (project page), Pure Earth / Blacksmith Institute, 2010
- The Toxic Rice Fields of China's Cancer Villages, Pure Earth, 2013
- Zhuang P., Zou B., Li N.Y., Li Z.A. Heavy metal contamination in soils and food crops around Dabaoshan mine in Guangdong, China: implication for human health. Environmental Geochemistry and Health 31(6), Springer (abstract via Europe PMC), 2009
- Shangba, Wikipedia, 2026
Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.