Those living along the coast of Changhua County are on edge and their discontent has been intensifying. A mega garbage incinerator is to be built in the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park (彰濱工業區) to handle the entire country’s industrial waste, but the area already has the highest density of incinerators nationwide.
In addition to the forthcoming incinerator, there are already six in operation. Worse, Changhua is between the coal-fired Taichung Power Plant in Longjing District (龍井) and Formosa Plastics Group’s naphtha cracker complex in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮).
The air pollution cannot be more serious. Dioxin and PM2.5 levels exceed the maximum allowed by regulations. The lung cancer mortality rate in Lugang Township (鹿港) and neighboring Fusing Township (福興) is 1.5 times higher than the national average. After the mega incinerator is completed, the situation will definitely get worse.
Cancer has been the leading cause of death in Taiwan for 40 consecutive years, and lung cancer has been the most common over the past 18 years, the Health Promotion Administration has said.
Academia Sinica research has also found that, as a result of air pollution, females are more prone to genetic mutations that can lead to cancer. Since 2020, the lung cancer mortality rate of women has been higher than that of men.
Improving air quality should be an urgent task.
The construction of the mega incinerator in Changhua has begun, but the contractor has already contravened the regulations. With a syndicated loan of NT$4.2 billion (US$136.9 million), this build-operate-transfer project is set to make Lugang’s air quality worse. The sky will become darker, as will the lungs of those living nearby.
Within 30 years, the number of lung cancer cases in Lugang has increased fivefold, and in Fusing it has risen eightfold. Having allowed a mega incinerator to be built in the area, officials have not once thought about residents’ lives.
Without communicating well with locals, the contractor and the officials launched the project saying that the environmental impact assessment process has been completed.
Perhaps the construction corporation is too powerful to be regulated by laws, and the government has been too arrogant to take public opinion into account.
Yeh Hsuen-che is a physician in Lugang Township.
Translated by Emma Liu
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hypersonic missile carried a simple message to the West over Ukraine: Back off, and if you do not, Russia reserves the right to hit US and British military facilities. Russia fired a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik,” or Hazel Tree, at Ukraine on Thursday in what Putin said was a direct response to strikes on Russia by Ukrainian forces with US and British missiles. In a special statement from the Kremlin just after 8pm in Moscow that day, the Russian president said the war was escalating toward a global conflict, although he avoided any nuclear
Would China attack Taiwan during the American lame duck period? For months, there have been worries that Beijing would seek to take advantage of an American president slowed by age and a potentially chaotic transition to make a move on Taiwan. In the wake of an American election that ended without drama, that far-fetched scenario will likely prove purely hypothetical. But there is a crisis brewing elsewhere in Asia — one with which US president-elect Donald Trump may have to deal during his first days in office. Tensions between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea have been at
US President-elect Donald Trump has been declaring his personnel picks for his incoming Cabinet. Many are staunchly opposed to China. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Trump’s nomination to be his next secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, said that since 2000, China has had a long-term plan to destroy the US. US Representative Mike Waltz, nominated by Trump to be national security adviser, has stated that the US is engaged in a cold war with China, and has criticized Canada as being weak on Beijing. Even more vocal and unequivocal than these two Cabinet picks is Trump’s nomination for
An article written by Uber Eats Taiwan general manager Chai Lee (李佳穎) published in the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) on Tuesday said that Uber Eats promises to engage in negotiations to create a “win-win” situation. The article asserted that Uber Eats’ acquisition of Foodpanda would bring about better results for Taiwan. The National Delivery Industrial Union (NDIU), a trade union for food couriers in Taiwan, would like to express its doubts about and dissatisfaction with Lee’s article — if Uber Eats truly has a clear plan, why has this so-called plan not been presented at relevant