'Coal rush' in China exacting a heavy toll
Illegal mines seen as threat to health
By Jehangir S. Pocha, Globe Correspondent  |  June 9, 2005

XIA SHI GOU, China -- Cao Jian Li stands out in this dusty coal-mining town. She
is 92, and the average life span here is 60 -- about a dozen years less than
China's national average.

Cao's tiny feet are reminders of the days when the emperors ruled and women's
feet were still bound. But Cao and others in this village in Shanxi Province, in
north central China, say they are still tied to another suffocating fate.

''We're dying early here," said Ma Jun Sheng, 43, the only doctor for miles
around. ''There's coal dust everywhere, which causes lots of disease -- lung
cancer, tuberculosis, asthma. And then there are the accidents. I've been here
16 or 17 years, and there is one every month."

Coal provides 75 percent of the energy powering the Chinese economy, the world's
fastest-growing, and Shanxi produces a quarter of the 1.7 billion metric tons
the country will burn this year, according to the China Coal Development and
Research Center in Beijing.

Although the coal industry is mostly controlled by several large state-owned
companies, hundreds of illegal mines run by fly-by-night operators seeking to
cash in on the ''coal rush" have sprung up in the area, according to local
officials and residents. They say that the quick- and dirty-mining tactics in
these illegal mines have exacted a heavy human and environmental toll.

For miles around the village, the soil, plants, and trees are gray with
soot. The air is heavy with eye-stinging fumes, and around Ma's clinic the land
lies rutted like a prune.

Over the past 10 years, intensive mining by both state-owned and illegal
companies has laden the air with particulates and dissipated the local water
table, according to residents. As the companies have dug into the earth, they
have struck underground water supplies that have drained away.

''The gap this left in the earth has caused the topsoil to crack and collapse,"
said Guo Ai Mi, 43, a local farmer.

Since Shanxi is one of the driest places in China, and the Fen River, a local
tributary of the mighty Yellow River, ran dry years ago, farming here is almost
impossible, Guo said. So many people have done the only thing they could to
survive -- they've begun mining illegally for coal themselves.

''There's so much of it around here, people just go anywhere they like and start
digging," said Wu Zhan Wei, 43. ''What else can we do?"

Local authorities say more than 500,000 people work as illegal miners in about
15,000 ''cottage" mines that sprouted across Shanxi in the past two years. Some
of these mines are less than 20 feet deep and dug by families who take the coal
to wholesalers, who in turn sell it to individuals and businesses from across
the region.

Others are large full-scale operations that produce as much as 10,000 tons of
coal per month, most of which is sold to regional power and steel
companies. Entirely illegal, they operate outside health, safety, and
environmental standards.

''It's hard to argue with demand," said Wu Gang, a journalist at the Shanxi
Youth Newspaper who covers the coal industry. ''Even big power and steel
companies come here to buy the illegal coal. They have no choice, they need it."

Not only does China need coal, it needs cheap coal; illegal miners sell their
coke for as little as $10 a ton. The result of running such low-cost operations
is often catastrophic.

''The most common problem is collapses," said Ma, the doctor, referring to
cave-ins, as well as explosions.

No precise government statistics exist for the number of injuries and deaths
suffered by workers in illegal coal mines. However, their safety record is no
doubt worse than that of China's official mines, which are the deadliest in the
world. Almost 6,000 Chinese miners died in accidents last year, according to
government reports.

Li Yizhong, minister for the State Administration for Work Safety, said last
month that the problem in places such as Shanxi ''is not because of inadequate
mining laws but their poor implementation as well as insufficient investment in
safety, poor construction, lax management, and inadequately trained workers."

Much of the coal China burns, particularly the yield from illegal mines,
contains high levels of fluoride, which can cause skeletal deformities in high
concentrations. Last year alone, China released more than 25 million tons of
sulfuric nitric, and calcic gases into the atmosphere, leading to increased acid
rain and illnesses across the country, according to the Chinese Research Academy
of Environmental Sciences in Beijing.

China has 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, according to the World
Health Organization. In Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi, the level of sulfuric
acid in the air is 10 times the amount that WHO considers safe.

Coal mining is considered good work by peasants in interior provinces, where
cutbacks in social spending forced by China's market reforms have made life
hard.

Ye Yuen Wen, 39, a farmer from southwestern Sichuan Province said he came here
to work for what he termed an informal coal mining company because his
six-person family made only about $600 a year from farming.

''We cannot live off the soil now," Ye said. ''There are too many people and too
little good land. Working here I earn three times as much as farming."