Dan Griffiths, BBC News Online
January 17, 2007

The small hamlet of Shangba is a tiny jumbled collection of houses sitting in the lush green paddy fields and hills of southern China. It sounds idyllic, but many of the locals are dying after drinking polluted water. Shangba has become one of the country’s growing number of what have been called “cancer villages”. A broad river runs to the side of the village, its shallow waters rippling over smooth stones. In the past the villagers relied on the river for drinking water, and to irrigate their crops. What they did not know was that mines further upstream were dumping their waste into it. … Read the full story [PDF].