On Nov 11, 2013, Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported that an 8-year-old girl from Jiangsu, a northeastern province of China, has been diagnosed with lung cancer. She is the youngest person in China, possibly the world, to be afflicted with the disease.
According to Xinhua’s website, xinhuanet.com, the girl’s disease is being attributed to air pollution by Jie Fengdong, a doctor at the Jiangsu Cancer Hospital in Nanjing where the girl is being treated. In particular, the girl had been exposed to harmful particles and dust over a long period of time while living on the polluted, busy streets of an unnamed area of Jiangsu Province.
The cancer patient’s young age has shocked news outlets worldwide. It has also raised questions about the serious, and even fatal, consequences of air pollution on people’s health. Xinhua quoted the doctor as saying that fine particulate matter in the air, known as PM 2.5, leads to inflammation if it becomes amassed in the lungs. This could in turn cause lung cancer.
On Oct 17, 2013, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it was cla: ssifying air pollution and its particulates as a major human carcinogen. Christopher P. Wild, director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, said on Oct 17 in a news conference in Geneva, that air pollution “is a leading environmental cause of cancer deaths.”
A significant episode of air pollution occurred last month in the city of Harbin in northeastern China. On Oct. 22, smog permeated the city, causing flight delays, stopping traffic and shutting down schools for several days. According to the Huffington Post, the city’s levels of PM 2.5 reached 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter. This is 40 times higher what is considered safe by the WHO.
The prevalence of lung cancer has skyrocketed in China in recent years. According to the Beijing Health Ministry, the amount of deaths from lung cancer has increased by four times in the last 30 years. While the country is rapidly industrializing, the air quality has been deteriorating, particularly in the provinces with many industrial urban areas, such as Jiangsu Province. Xinhua named lung cancer as the leading type of cancer in China, specifying that most people diagnosed with the disease are not thought to have contracted it through prolonged smoking.
The report also stated that the average age of those diagnosed with lung cancer in China is between 30 and 40 years. This is much younger than in the United States, where the average age at diagnosis is 70, according to the American Cancer Society.
Since the news has broken regarding the prevalence of early-age lung cancer in China, no statements have been made by major world organizations or state governments with regards to the right to clean air as a basic human right. However, on Sept 12, 2013, the Chinese government had announced their five-year plan to tackle the increasingly dangerous problem of air pollution. According to TIME Magazine, starting immediately and lasting until 2017, the plan will aim to promote clean energy use and reduce methods of production which cause heavy pollution.
