VietNamNet Bridge – A small village, covering an area of 0.4 square kilometers with households comprising 1,000 people, is turning into a new “cancer village” north of Hanoi.

Thanh Tuoc Cemetery

All the water wells of the households living near Thanh Tuoc Cemetery, where the village is located, are seriously polluted.

Do Van Dien, a local resident, showed reporters a basin of water he had just retrieved from his water well.

The water in the basin was dark with many strange objects at the bottom.

A reporter tried to come closer to the basin to find out what the objects were. But he suddenly stopped halfway, because he felt a terrible smell from the water.

The water pumped from the well of the next house also showed similar colours and smells. This was the house of Nguyen Thi Diem, whose husband died of lung cancer.

Nguyen Thi Gia, 71, a neighbor, told reporters that her husband died of stomach cancer one year ago, while her son had been told that he suffered leukemia.

“The dirty water is rounding up around our house,” Gia said. “The sewer from Thanh Tuoc Cemetery goes near my house. In rainy season, the entrance door is inundated with the terrible water.”

Thanh Tuoc Cemetery was built some 50 years ago, with no waste water treatment system. At that time, no one thought such a system was necessary.

However, since the cemetery is filling up, the pollution is getting more serious, which has affected the lives of thousands of locals.

The farmers in Phu Huu Hamlet have made a living with agricultural production for many generations. However, it is becoming more difficult to sell farm produce.

“No one wants to buy vegetables and farm produce grown in Phu Huu,” said Nguyen Quy Trong, a local resident.

“The water from Thanh Tuoc Cemetery has been flowing directly into the environment over many years,” he explained.

Nguyen Duc Nhi, 69, a local man, said that dozens of persons have died of cancer since 2005 in the Road No 23 area, while many others are expected to die.

Nhi said the situation was getting worse as the people who recently died of cancer were younger than those who had died before.

Although a project on providing clean water to local residents has been drawn up, it has not been implemented.

Local residents, who became citizens of Hanoi six years ago, when the government decided to expand Hanoi by merging with several neighboring provinces, are still waiting to get clean water.

Nong Nghiep