Power plants and heavy industries have sprung up across much of China in recent decades – with devastating effects on the environment and human health. 

According to the Center for Global Development, China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter from power generation. And an independent report, “The Carbon Tariff” by economists Jeff Rubin and Benjamin Tal, says China’s emissions have jumped 120 percent since the start of this decade.

Thick air pollution, coal dust and contaminating factory run-off, have become part of daily life for many Chinese people.

Those who live and work near factories are suffering from a range of health problems, like lung cancer or birth defects.

In a rural area of the vast Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, farmers now share the grassland with a coal chemical plant, an iron processing plant and a large coal-fired power station.

In a small village on the edge of the Mengxi Industrial Zone of Wuhai city, residents complain pollution from a local iron processing plant is seriously affecting their health.

Sixty-year-old Mr. Cheng has farmed in the village for more than 30 years. He says the air quality is so bad now it’s difficult to see the view from his small farmhouse.

[Mr. Cheng, 60-Year-Old Farmer]:
"Before it was so clear I could see the mountains and the Yellow River from far away. Now it's grey and we cannot see anything.”
  
Another resident, Mrs. Wu, has lived in the village for 15 years.

[Mrs. Wu, Local Farmer]:
"There are so many factories, so us farmers have pollution. The crops are no good. When we used to harvest it was fine, but now our nostrils get all black. There's dirt up our noses and it's so terrible, so dirty. Our noses end up blacker than a coal miner's.”

For decades, the Chinese regime has placed little or no restrictions on waste from factories, plants, and power stations.

Five hundred kilometers east of Wuhai, residents of Xuanhua District in Hebei province are still complaining about pollution, even after some plants were temporarily closed for last year's Olympic Games.  

The district has plants that produce or process coal, steel, concrete, and fertilizers, and a coal-fired power station that looked closed last Tuesday (December 8).

Sixty-year-old Chang Xiangjiao and his wife Sheng Yun live on the edge of Yaohualukou village which backs on to a coal processing plant.    

Passing trucks scatter coal dust along the road, beside their home. Washing their clothes turns the water a dark, dirty grey.
  
Chang and Sheng have seen the water and air quality decline steadily over the past few decades.  They say it improved a little after authorities closed one fertilizer processing plant for the Olympics. But they are still concerned about the high incidence of chronic illnesses in the area.

[Chang Xiangjiao, Yaohualukou Village Resident]:
"My throat often feels uncomfortable, and I think it's got a little to do with the air. In our village, a lot of people get unexpected diseases. It's mostly lung cancer and colon cancer.”

Heavily polluted areas of China often report a higher-than-normal incidence of cancers, respiratory diseases, diarrhea and other illnesses.

Two years ago, the World Bank estimated 460-thousand Chinese die prematurely each year from breathing polluted air, and drinking or washing in dirty water.
   
In 2007, the World Bank estimated that illnesses and other consequences of air and water pollution cost China’s economy 100 billion U.S. dollars a year, equal to about 5.8 percent of the nation's GDP.