VietNamNet Bridge - Lung Vi Hamlet of Dong Phuong Commune in Chuong My District in Hanoi has been marked with a red sign on the “cancer village” map drawn by government agencies. However, no action has been taken, while more and more residents have died of cancer.

Pham Thi Que, a local resident who was washing vegetables when guests arrived, showed the visitors a basin of black water. Que said she and her family members use the water for daily cooking and washing.

“This is the second water well we have dug. The first one gave the water a fishy smell. The second gives black water. However, we still have to use it because we have no other choice,” she said.

Que said her children have had spots for several years which cannot be cured. Her father-in-law suffers from ulcerations.

“People guess my father got this from working on the polluted rice fields for many years,” she said. “Many local residents have suffered from cancer, which is really worrying. Two brothers of my father died of cancer.”

In Lung Vi Hamlet, many families of four to five members have died of cancer. NVC’s four out of five sons died of cancer at a young age, while C himself died of lung cancer.

Nguyen Xuan Sac, a healthcare officer, said there were 380 families with 1,800 people in the hamlet, and 47 had died of cancer from 1990 to 2014. 

In 2014 alone, nine died of cancer and four were undergoing treatment for cancer.

A local resident said he had heard that appropriate agencies had sent staff to the hamlet. They surmised that the problem was polluted water.

Vu Van Tuat, 57, a cancer patient, said everyone can see with their naked eyes that the water is dirty and unsafe. “As you can see, the white clothes turn yellow after they are washed with the water,” he said.

“However, the dirty water still is used daily by local residents. We try to clean water by putting the water through a filtration system. However, this does not help,” he said.

Phan Ngoc Huan, deputy chair of the Dong Phuong Yen Commune, noted that pollution is inevitable, because the untreated waste water from the factories, industrial workshops, farms and handicrafts workshops in the locality go to Lung Vi first before running to the fields.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment has found 37 “cancer villages” in 22 provinces and cities nationwide, where 1,136 people have died of cancer.

Tin Tuc