The nation’s economic development is taking a heavy toll on the environment. Rivers are polluted and the air is filled with carcinogens. The ecosystem is fast becoming an environment that can hardly sustain life.
Over the past 30 years, cancer has become the leading cause of death in the nation, with lung cancer causing the most of deaths. Clearly, Taiwan’s environment is filthy.
Two weeks ago, the WHO released a report that said smoked sausage, bacon and burger patties that carried a variety of chemical preservatives are all carcinogenic, no different from cigarettes, alcohol, asbestos and arsenic.
During President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, there have been food safety issues, such as problems with powdered milk, foods containing plasticizing agents and industrial starch, the use of recycled cooking oil, contaminated tofu and dried fruits containing chemical preservatives, among other issues. In addition to causing food scares among the public, the issues led to the resignations of two ministers of health and welfare with medical backgrounds.
During the eight years of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government, there have been frequent food scares and environmental crises.
Last month, near the mouth of the Bazhang River, a dead sperm whale was found washed up on a beach. Its stomach was filled with fishing nets and plastic bags. It is not only wildlife that is being killed by what they ingest. Many Taiwanese are still drinking water coming from lead pipes. Ninety percent of the faucets in the nation are made of a lead-copper alloy with a lead content 28 times higher than the legal standard in Europe and the US. It turns out that the lead-free stainless steel faucets produced in Taiwan are exported, while inferior products are sold in the domestic market.
Waste created by heavy industries are discharged as untreated wastewater that pollutes rivers, like Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE) allegedly did, although the company was acquitted.
It needs to be asked: Over the past eight years, during which many of the nation’s waterways have become polluted, has there been an instance of a single factory facing prosecution, receiving a large fine or taking measures to improve its environmental record?
It is not difficult to realize that industrial wastewater contaminated with heavy metals, toxic chemicals, pesticides and herbicides would eventually flow into rivers and the ocean, where it would be absorbed by microorganisms, shellfish, crabs and fish.
The biological effects of heavy metals, chemicals and environmental hormones on swordfish, tuna, whale sharks and other large fish are horrifying. A few years ago, a pediatrician reported cases of lead poisoning among children who frequently ate food made from large fish.
Asbestos, which the WHO classifies as a carcinogen, used to be a popular construction material in Taiwan. It causes pulmonary fibrosis and lung cancer, but the hazardous material is still everywhere. Public health academics constantly urge the Environmental Protection Administration to investigate and remedy the situation.
Each year in October, when the seasonal northeast winds start blowing, the blue sky over central and southern Taiwan disappears, to be replaced by a gray sky, which is polluted air caused by PM2.5 — particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter — that have serious effects on health.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified outdoor air pollution and fine particulate matter as primary carcinogens. These not only cause lung cancer, but also cardiovascular disease, autism and allergies. However, the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Health Promotion Administration has still not listed air pollution as a major health threat.
While the ruling pan-blue camp’s response to environmental and food safety issues has been dismal, the opposition pan-green camp has failed to do much better. Are people stupid or just plain helpless? Even if the ruling party changes, it does not necessarily mean that there would be a change in policies regarding the issues of food safety and environmental protection. Taichung might now be run by the pan-green camp, as are Changhua and Yunlin counties, but the old pan-blue model of chopping down trees and letting factories get away with pollution remains the same.
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) led her governing team to ASE to give the company the party’s backing, and DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who looks likely to win January’s presidential election, visited the director of Formosa Petrochemical Corp’s naphtha cracker complex in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮).
The public can see clearly that there is no real policy difference between the pan-blue and the pan-green camps on environmental and food safety issues. Politicians and capitalists are all the same. Pan-green county commissioners trick voters before elections so they can replace pan-blue county commissioners, but they do nothing about food safety and environmental protection issues.
None of the presidential candidates have clear policies on food safety or environmental protection. As for the legislature, only the Green Party-Social Democratic Party alliance has said that it would tax rich consortia and demand that they fulfill their social responsibilities. They have shamed Formosa Plastics Group as a highly polluting business, saying that the cost of the pollution it causes is borne by the public. The government must stop giving tax subsidies to industries that harm the environment and should implement energy taxes to promote a green energy economy.
Do Taiwanese have to wait for the third force to rise before any of this can be implemented?
Chiang Sheng is an attending physician in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Mackay Memorial Hospital.
Translated by Clare Lear
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