From China to Jihad?

It’s a very long way from China’s arid Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in the country’s far northwest to its semi-tropical borders with Vietnam, Laos, and Burma in the south, and then it’s another precarious distance from there, down rivers and across fortified borders, all the way to the seaside Thai town of Songkhla, about forty miles from the Malaysian border. And it’s longer still from Songkhla to the battlefields of Syria, thousands of miles away.

Pollution and Health in China: Confronting the Human Crisis

Anyone who lives in north China understands that the air quality that they endure is potentially hazardous. There are other environmental hazards to health that have been less obvious or less widely understood, but that emerge in patterns of illness among populations in certain areas: the cancer villages that can be identified, particularly around chemical industry installations, for example, or elevated levels of lead that are found in children in certain areas, as a result of battery production or simply proximity to coal fired power generation. Lead poisoning can cause damage to the liver and kidneys, as well as permanent intellectual and development disabilities, and children up to the age of seven are particularly vulnerable because of their immature central nervous systems.

Embed Code: 
Topics: 
Environment
Organization: 
chinadialogue