After the second world war, the widespread spraying of insecticides and disinfectants like DDT and chlorine on people, animals, and foodstuffs in the U.S. caused harm to human health and environmental damage, and pollution of the land and water. In the 1960s many people voiced questions, in particular about heavy metals like mercury, arsenic, and copper, which were important ingredients in insecticides. Stories of the destruction of farmland also fill the histories of the development of Europe and Japan.

Taiwan developed relatively late, so that it was somewhat behind in terms of spraying pesticides, and the most destructive and toxic chemicals had already been banned for use anywhere in the world, so the problem was not so severe as in the advanced industrial nations. This was good luck. But since all that is true, and Taiwan has had the experience of others to serve as a mirror, why is it that today this has become a pressing problem for us?

Everybody's afraid of cadmium rice: At the end of July, news came out of Homei Township in Changhua County that the rice paddies had been polluted by the heavy metal cadmium, and would have to be abandoned.

For a long time, farmers have not eaten the rice they grow themselves, so that rice from southern Taiwan gets shipped to the north and that from the north shipped south. One often hears rumors of people plotting to pass their dangers on to others. To day people are again in a panic: "Will I end up eating cadmium rice?"

Everyone is afraid of cadmium rice, but don't assume that it's only rice that's been polluted by metals. Wang Yin-po, professor and head of the Department of Soil Science at National Chung Hsing University, says, "I don't eat water convolvulus when I'm in Tainan." The scrap metal dealers in Wanli in Tainan want to extract the most valuable metals, so they wash the scrap in acid. "Low-value" copper is washed out with the acid, and flows into the neighboring Er-jen River, both of whose banks are planted with the hollow green veggie. "The content of copper in the convolvulus is very high," says Wang.

Rice and vegetables are both problems. How about some fruit? On Tungshan Road in Taichung there are a lot of factories making bird cages. Bird cages require plated zinc, "so there's a significant amount of zinc in the strawberry fields in the neighborhood," says a horticulture specialist.

The 15 percent pollution: In 1987, the Environmental Protection Administration commissioned National Taiwan University and National Chung Hsing University to do an island-wide survey of the degree of pollution in farmland from eight families of heavy metals, including cadmium, zinc, copper, lead, and mercury (please see the accompanying table). Because the land has slight amounts of metals to start with, after discounting the effects of background ingredients, it was discovered that 15 percent of the farmland in the country suffered from such man-added pollutants.

In fact, ever since 1984--when it was found that the Chi-li Chemical Company had been pouring out cadmium waste water over a long period, leading to 85 hectares of farmland becoming wasteland--incidents of the destruction of farmland have come one after another from all over the place. Each occasion creates a fear in society: "Am I eating contaminated rice?"

Why does cadmium rice continually appear? And why is pollution of farmland in Taiwan so serious? How has it been generated? And what kinds of effects will land pollution have?

Confronted with the farmland pollution report, the Council on Agriculture (COA) hurried to explain that the surveys used wide area samples, and it did not mean that so much farmland had really suffered serious adulteration. It would be necessary in the future to do further studies of small sample areas. Although the pollution of farmland might not be so frightening as the announcement of "quarantine areas" suggests, "it's still a harsh warning for us all," is the unanimous view of those in agriculture and environmental engineering.

The last line of defense: Land is capable of sustaining a kaleidoscope of life. Trees climb to 100 feet, and still fallen leaves return to the roots. It absorbs and digests all kinds of nature's "wastes." Today, with its power to help clean up water, air, and garbage, the land has become the last line of environmental defense.

Polluted water from garbage dumps, from gas stations which can be found everywhere, and even pesticides sprayed on farmland and waste water from the pig-raising industry all percolate into and are permanently left behind in the earth.

As far as the soil goes, organic pollution can return to nature cyclically through being broken down by microbes and organic matter, or even by earthworms, turning back into water or carbon dioxide. Although many environmental scholars believe that there is also a problem of organic pollution, the scholarly community still lacks indepth under-standing in this area. In any case, organic waste is highly mobile; Taiwan also has strong winds and heavy rains, "and has the good fortune to be surrounded by sea on all sides, so just two or three storms and most of it gets washed away," is how one scholar describes it.

But heavy metals are inorganic materials, different from organic materials which can link up with carbon molecules. They are processed out of ores and originally have the special characteristic of close binding with the soil. They lack the mobility of organic matter and can stay in one place for hundreds or thousands of years. And the microbes in the soil which can dismember virtually anything are useless against them.

For the ordinary people, says an old Chinese saying, food is Fate. Farmland is of course intimately tied up with that most basic need of the masses for sustenance. So farmland destruction has naturally moved up to the top of the list for surveys and studies by research institutions.

Water and land are inseparable: The special rice-planting culture of Taiwan has caused land pollution in Taiwan to "take a different route but end up in the same place" as other countries.

Besides Japan, very few countries have both developed and rely primarily on rice paddy agriculture. With the paddies being planted twice a year, recently it has been necessary to bring in water via irrigation for ten months out of the year. Chang Tsun-kuo, director of the Department of Agricultural Engineering at National Taiwan University, notes that few articles done outside Taiwan have investigated the relationship between irrigation and soil, because there has been no such need given their planting systems.

"Water comes from heaven." In agricultural societies, things which are filtered out with water are all organic matter that can be broken down and returned to the natural cycle. Thus, in several places in north Taiwan which are relatively short of water, the agricultural irrigation system and the town or village drainage system were linked together, so that water could be circulated and reused, thus saving water resources.

In order to accommodate the environment of rice paddy agriculture, the Ching dynasty and Japanese occupiers continually built irrigation systems. After industrial waste water of a completely different nature entered them, the "clash of cultures" between agricultural and industrial made itself manifest in the quality of irrigation water.

Taiwan is very small in area. Add to this the fact that there has long been a lack of a national land plan, and there is not a clear spatial division of land for different uses. The "Industrial Incentive and Preferential Treatment Provisions" adopted in the 1970s permitted establishing factories in farming areas, and small and medium industries sprung up "like mushrooms after a spring shower" in the Chianan Plain in western Taiwan, so that it became just like the chaotic mix of residential and commercial zones in the cities.

Industry and agriculture thus shared the same land; factories were built and expelled polluted water, without doing waste water treatment or building piping systems. With the units in charge of agriculture lacking the concept that irrigation and drainage should be separate, and the amount of water used by factories being far greater than any one in agriculture had imagined, plus an unwillingness to turn down any comers, agricultural water channels eventually became the most convenient waste water drainage systems for industry.

Quantity, not quality: Chen Zueng-sang, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Chemistry at National Taiwan University, points out, "Virtually all of the agricultural land which has been polluted is just downstream from industrial parks where factories are concentrated."

In particular, with the increasing use of metals and other compounds, (please see the article "Fatal Attraction") all of the products from the export led industrial development of Taiwan--from yesterday's "bicycle kingdom," "umbrella kingdom," and "metals kingdom" to the "computer kingdom" people hope to establish today--have required electroplating treatment.

At the peak period there were perhaps 5,000- 6,000 electroplating factories. These all required large amounts of heavy metals for use in electroplating. Every day hundreds or thousands of tons of waste water including lead, copper, cadmium, and mercury were dumped into irrigation ditches.

There are hundreds of types of industries, and of course the electroplating industry was not the only one polluting. "But it is certain that more than 80% of the contamination in Taiwan's soil is introduced through water pollution," says an official at the Environmental Protection Administration. Some even go so far as to say that if Taiwan had no water pollution, there would be no farmland pollution.

In the 1970s, as the irrigation authorities saw their clean water turning turgid, there was a reaction and "Taiwan Province Irrigation-Use Water Quality Standards" were established. For the first time it was stipulated that damage to the water could be handled under criminal law. Unfortunately, the implementers of this vanguard environmental protection law were the non-governmental water conservancy associations, without any practical "teeth." Given the tradition of the water conservancy associations to only "ask how much water there is, not the quality," the original fine intention of the law to give agriculture the power to protect itself drained away. This has led to the current situation where "40% of the irrigation channels have been heavily polluted," as last year's survey by the Taiwan Province Water Conser vancy Bureau states. Chang Tsun-kuo adds further that, "the problem of the contamination of irrigation channels is ubiquitous and severe, and it is a problem that cannot but demand attention."

Where the water's been tainted, soil pollution cannot be far behind.

Soil Terminators: Soil is not like flowing water or air, and it can only sit where it is and take the pollution dumped on it. Metals have continually leaked in and accumulated, and the soil--which could once digest anything--is itself being terminated. The last line of defense against pollution is finally being smashed. Metals allow us to under stand that the soil cannot just take every toxic thing we throw at it, nor will it strike back. But it takes a little time before the metals dumped into the soil reach the point where they do harm to plants and animals, including man. The process of accumulation is not visible, as it is in water, so soil pollution does not seem to get the attention that water and air pollution get, and always seems to take a back seat in environmental protection work.

"It's not that the tolerance of soil is so great, it's just that it hasn't taken effect yet, that's all," says Chen Shou-chiang, a technician at the Irrigation and Engineering Division of the Forestry Department at the COA.

One type of pesticide containing arsenic which had been heavily used in the United States had already been replaced by other pesticides by the 1940s. But in 1952 research institutions discovered that the amount of arsenic in American manufactured paper cigarettes had increased 600 times over, due to the arsenic which was retained in the soil and not easily broken down.

Heavy metals in the soil surely are not very mobile. Lin Shen-lin, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on copper pollution for his Ph.D., and is a lecturer in the Department of Horticulture at National Chung Hsing University, says that no one knows when they will explode. For example, the ions in the copper that comes out of factories are latched on to by organic material in the soil like a policeman on a thief. But organic matter ages and weakens, while the copper ions stay youthful. When the cop dies, the thief will again raise havoc. "This is something that will be disastrous for future generations," says Lin.

In the 19th century, many French vineyards sprayed a wine solution with copper in it to kill insects. It was only when French farmers planted vegetables there in the 20th century, and their harvests failed, that they realized what an inheritance their forebears had left them.

Cadmium rice raises the curtain: Taiwan is taking a similar path. In the 196O's, pollutants poured out of homes and factories. In the 1980s, the cadmium rice from Kuan Yin in Taoyuan County finally lifted the veil on cadmium pollution. It wasn't at all shocking to find that 50,000 hectares of farmland had been affected across the island.

In particular, among families of heavy metals, it was that most special one cadmium that was the main despoiler in tainted farmland. Compared to others "in the same line of work," cadmium's ability to penetrate the bodies of plants is especially powerful; it is relatively easily absorbed by plants, and from there affects man. Thus rice paddies suffer most readily from cadmium damage.

The most famous incident of cadmium rice in the world occurred in Japan. Because a zinc mine was opened in the area, the cadmium that was trapped in the zinc mine flowed out, contaminating the neighboring rice fields. The local residents consumed cadmium rice for a long period. The symptoms of cadmium poisoning are that it readily replaces calcium in the body, creating a calcium deficiency, with dramatic pain in the skeletal structure. "The whole world was frightened," explains Wang Yin-po, the earliest person in Taiwan to do studies of land pollution, clarifying further that the impact of heavy metals is by no means limited to rice paddies.

The rice people in Taiwan eat is the product of water paddies. Cadmium goes from the mud through the roots and stem and spreads into the leaves, so it gets somewhat thinned out. However, for vegetables often the whole plant is consumed; moreover, the growing period is short, and each household plants and harvests at different times, so it is not like rice where each planting season can be clearly differentiated. Once vegetables are cut or picked, they can be sold within a day, so it is virtually impossible to control their flow.

Taro? Zinc again: But the latent crisis of metals in the soil is not like the "even spread" of air and water pollution: Each case has its special characteristics, and there are differences in types of soil. Thus the impact of heavy metals on the soil differs, and there are differences in the degree of blight and in urgency of attention in terms of its harm to plants and human beings.

"Each channel for generating metal pollution is different," says Li Gwo-chen. Cadmium, mercury, and lead most frequently harm people's health through rice; even when the plant has absorbed a high amount, the appearance of the rice remains normal so it is hard to prevent it from getting out. If it's copper or zinc, there will be a clear change in the plant's appearance. Recently the products of the taro field of farmer Chen Shui-lien of Ta-chia in Taichung showed changes of color, while the stems and leaves withered. It was determined to be "zinc poisoning" by the Taichung District Agricultural Improvement Station (DAIS). When the amount of mercury becomes excessive, empty husks readily appear in the rice, even though it would still not affect human health. But the agricultural community is even more worried about a drop in production, and because of this someone was appointed at every DAIS to take charge of incidents of metal pollution in the farmland.

However, there are still debates in the academic community about the extent of heavy metal contamination in the farmland. A small amount of zinc and arsenic can make plants grow even better. The amount of copper and zinc would have to build up to very high levels before it could have any impact on human health. It is also very difficult for lead to pass from the soil into the plants, and most of the lead in cases of high-lead rice has come from air pollution. Thus the standards for domestic rice cite only cadmium and mercury. And it is hard to yet a definite conclusion as to whether affected soil, tike that of the water convolvulus on the banks of the Er-jen River, should be listed as officially polluted.

No compromise on health: It is just as one factory operator who despoils the banks of the Er-jen said to an official of the EPA: "You say it's dangerous, but I've been here a long time, and aren't I living just fine?" To be sure, "it's not so easy to be poisoned by eating cadmium rice," says one environmental engineering scholar. "But you can't compromise when it comes to health," says Chou Ching-yu, magistrate of Changhwa County. You can't just ignore farmland pollution just because the toxicity is not yet intense enough, "You can see the extent to which a country respects the lives of its citizens by looking at the government's attitude toward soil pollution," says Lin Cheng-fang, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Environmental Engineering at National Taiwan University. What's more, we don't really under stand all that much about the impact on health of metals transmitted through plants.

When heavy metals meet plants, given that the reaction of each type of plant to pollutants differs, just what the exact relationship is among soil, metals, plants, and disease when the four are brought together has become a focus for agricultural, environmental, and public health officials. In the past agricultural staff knew the soil, but not the metals. Environmental engineering scholars understood the metals, but not the soil. But this situation is changing.

For example, many agricultural researchers are doing studies of the relationship between heavy metals and vegetables to understand the degree of tolerance of each variety toward contaminants. Is there some special structure or resistance in the plants that do not readily absorb and attach metals?

But what's going on outside the research lab? Faced with unremitting pollution, what can be done?

Only a downstream problem? Solving the problem of soil pollution requires simultaneous action in improvement of the industrial productive system, water pollution prevention, improving irrigation water quality and doing even more de-tailed surveys of farmland; the engineering involved will take a great deal of time. But the seriousness of the problem today means that we can't wait.

Urban lifestyles separate people from the soil. If there is adulterated water, people will cry uneasily that "this is the water we have to drink." And they will demand the construction of incinerators when no place can be found to bury garbage. But it seems that soil pollution has no direct connection with the great majority of people. The agricultural sector is weak, and their "cries of uneasiness" are unlikely to get much attention.

Despite being the primary "factor of production" for the nation, soil has always been considered a "downstream" problem, lower in priority than water and air pollution and waste disposal. There is not even a "soil pollution law." Thus agricultural agencies will only investigate for contamination after farmers take the initiative to request such a survey. There is no way to strictly enforce prohibitions on cultivation of polluted land; indeed there are still people planting vegetables for their own consumption in the Kuan Yin area. There is no legal procedure for handling contaminated rice. Lands that are today declared affected could very well end up like Kuan Yin, neglected and overgrown for eight years, so that the land becomes scorched earth, which is a loss for the farmers and for the nation.

I'm O.K., you're--contaminated: When the Kuan Yin land pollution incident had been con firmed by researchers, the executive branch agencies nevertheless feared creating panic. Says Li Gwo-chen, director of the Taiwan Agricultural Chemicals and Toxic Substances Research Institute, even today everyone is still wasting time and effort. The best example is the Ho-mei pollution incident which occurred this past July.

An investigation was only begun after farmers took the initiative to request one. But the situation became one of taking samples here, but not taking samples next door; or of taking samples from two separate fields, without taking samples from the one in the middle. On neighboring fields drawing from the same irrigation system, farmers on one side had their fields declared contaminated, while those on the other passed untouched. "Since there's a problem to begin with, then just thoroughly clarify it in one stroke. Otherwise, given the current data, how can we have a comprehensive understanding and get a grip on the pollution problem in that area?" asks Li Gwo-chen, increasingly agitated. He understands clearly that just to treat the plants on the surface cannot address the "underlying" problem, but the agricultural bureaucracies only care whether the paddy rice has surpassed the safety standards, and pay no attention to the soil below. The agencies which are in charge of soil quality, the environmental protection people, then have to send out another batch of people to study the soil, so that there is redundancy and waste of manpower and budgets.

Mr. Bigs should clean up their heavy metal: Faced with the red, blue, green, and other variously colored liquid pollutants generated by the electroplating industry, the industrial community ten years ago thought to follow the example of Japan and establish a special electroplating industrial zone to concentrate the scattered factories in one place and treat the waste water collectively. But most of Taiwan's electroplating operations are small scale, with little capital, manpower, or even intention to do pollution control. In order to stay competitive, it was to their advantage to "close one eye" and keep going. "Everyone's attitude was -- no blood, no foul," states Li Tung-liang, a Changhua Coun ty councilor and a director of the Changhua Pollution Prevention Association.

Her comment is simple, yet gets to the heart of the problem. "We hope that in the future the big companies will take responsibility to clean up," says Hong Cheng-chung, deputy director general of the Bureau of Solid Waste Control at the Environmental Protection Administration. In order to avoid the costs of environmental protection, many large companies subcontract their electroplating work to small satellite plants, which is the reason behind the proliferation of so many small electroplating operations. In the future it will be essential to require the big companies to consolidate operations and set up their own electroplating departments.

The discussion of the problem of soil pollution is not limited to the land itself. "Even more importantly, the past decision-making process, industrial policy and national land planning are all closely related," suggests Kevin Lo Shang-lien, professor in the Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering at National Taiwan University. If the underground factories disappear, will that take care of the problem? If Taiwan's industrial structure still requires plastics, then cadmium must be used to process plastic, so that wastes will still be generated.

Land is not just for farming: In the future the problems will become even more acute. Taiwan has everything--except land. This is not a re producible resource. If there is contamination of land in the U.S., the whole town can be relocated, but where would people in Taiwan go to live? The environment here is thus under greater pressure than elsewhere, and the overlap of types of pollution is similarly greater.

In the transformation of economy and society, agriculture has lapsed into being a secondary--in deed tertiary--pursuit. It has steadily declined in importance in the productive structure, and people feel that it is dispensable in an age where the emphasis is on industry. But when the day comes that there is no more pure land, what we will have lost will certainly not be limited to "unimportant" agriculture.

[Picture Caption]

With pollution of the irrigation system, farmers can only rely on drawing underground water for use.

You dump, I irrigate; when the farmer opens the irrigation channel, the water that flows from homes and factories will seep right into the crop fields.

Whether openly or covertly, agricultural water channels are used to expel waste water; having been borrowed for forty years, the repayment now is pollution of the soil.

Heavy Metal Pollution in the Soil in Taiwan in 1987

Orange indicates an area where heavy metals pollution is somewhat high.

Brown indicates farmland that has already been seriously polluted by heavy metals which can affect agricultural production.

(Map courtesy of the Department of Soil Science at National Chung Hsing University)

Land which suffered heavy metals pollution in Huatan Rural Township in Changhua County has lain unused for years. It is still not certain what the solution to polluted land is.

When a given area is polluted, it is necessary to take samples and do tests throughout the area; that's the only way to accurately determine the polluted zone.

Cadmium rice fills the warehouse. The rice harvested from cadmium contaminated land in Homei Township waits to beincinerated.

Rice which has suffered cadmium pollution still looks as healthy as normal, so that neither farmers nor consumers can take precautions against it.

When there is no longer any pure land on the earth, we will have lost a lot more than just the "tertiary" agricultural sector of the economy.

You dump, I irrigate; when the farmer opens the irrigation channel, the water that flows from homes and factories will seep right into the crop fields.

Whether openly or covertly, agricultural water channels are used to expel waste water; having been borrowed for forty years, the repayment now is pollution of the soil.

Heavy Metal Pollution in the Soil in Taiwan in 1987 Orange indicates an area where heavy metals pollution is somewhat high. Brown indicates farmland that has already been seriously polluted by heavy metals which can affect agricultural production. （Map courtesy of the Department of Soil Science at National Chung Hsing University）

Land which suffered heavy metals pollution in Huatan Rural Township in Changhua County has lain unused for years. It is still not certain what the solution to polluted land is.

When a given area is polluted, it is necessary to take samples and do tests throughout the area; that's the only way to accurately determine the polluted zone.

Cadmium rice fills the warehouse. The rice harvested from cadmium contaminated land in Homei Township waits to beincinerated.

Rice which has suffered cadmium pollution still looks as healthy as normal, so that neither farmers nor consumers can take precautions against it.