Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures, Graphs and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to the English Language Edition
- 1 Retrospective Thoughts on the ‘Cancer Village’ Phenomenon
- 2 The Ins and Outs of a ‘Cancer Village’
- 3 A Subei ‘Cancer Village’
- 4 Environmental Change and Health Risks
- 5 A Prosperous ‘Cancer Village’
- 6 Coexistence of Poverty and Cancer
- 7 Problematization and De-stigmatization
- 8 Behind the ‘High Incidence of Lung Cancer’
- 9 Villagers’ Perceptions of and Responses to the Relationship between Cancer and Pollution
- 10 Villagers Strategies for Mitigating Environmental Health Risks
- Index
- Index (Chinese) 中文索引
4 - Environmental Change and Health Risks
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures, Graphs and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to the English Language Edition
- 1 Retrospective Thoughts on the ‘Cancer Village’ Phenomenon
- 2 The Ins and Outs of a ‘Cancer Village’
- 3 A Subei ‘Cancer Village’
- 4 Environmental Change and Health Risks
- 5 A Prosperous ‘Cancer Village’
- 6 Coexistence of Poverty and Cancer
- 7 Problematization and De-stigmatization
- 8 Behind the ‘High Incidence of Lung Cancer’
- 9 Villagers’ Perceptions of and Responses to the Relationship between Cancer and Pollution
- 10 Villagers Strategies for Mitigating Environmental Health Risks
- Index
- Index (Chinese) 中文索引
Summary
Abstract
Cause of death data show that Lianshui County has a high incidence of oesophagus cancer. This chapter considers health risks in the county from the perspective of environmental history. After the Yellow River became blocked and took over the course of the Huai River, it caused Lianshui to suffer an 800-year period of floods, waterlogging and attendant disasters. This brought prolonged poverty and water-related health risks. The later conversion of dry fields to rice paddy brought further changes in the water environment of Lianshui's villages, connecting drinking water sources to the agricultural irrigation system, and causing new health risks. However, as the economic circumstances of the village improved, so did the drinking water supply, and water-related health risks then declined.
Keywords: environmental history, diet, rice paddies, ponds, environment and health, village doctors
During fieldwork in Lianshui, Jiangsu, I learnt that there was a high incidence of oesophageal cancer in some rural areas of the county. Later, research at the Health Bureau and a review of the literature confirmed this. In 2013, oesophageal cancer was the primary cause of death from cancer in Lianshui. The mortality rate was 49.94/100000, accounting for 34.19% of all cancer deaths, and this was approximately three times the national rural mortality rate for oesophageal cancer for that period.
The latest authoritative medical textbooks attribute the risk factors for cancer to two main sources: environmental factors and hereditary factors. Environmental factors mainly fall into three categories: chemical carcinogens, and physical and biological factors. Hereditary factors include cancers that are passed on genetically within families but also hereditary susceptibility to cancer. Purely hereditary cancers account for only a small percentage of the total and due to the interaction between genes and the environment, most human cancers are still caused by the pathogenic effect of environmental factors. The precise causes of oesophageal cancer are as yet undetermined, but a substantial volume of statistical, experimental and intervention medical research shows that the main risk factors for the disease include environmental factors, nutrition, lifestyle, and genetics.
This chapter uses an environmental history perspective to analyse the effects of changes in the water environment on the production activities and lives of villagers in Lianshui County and examine how environmental change contributes to different types of health risks.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- 'Chinese Cancer Villages'Rural Development, Environmental Change and Public Health, pp. 125 - 158Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020