Large Environmental Protest in Beijing

Residents from a neighborhood next to a garbage incinerator protested the toxic emissions, which include dioxin.

Traffic was blocked for more than three hours because of the large scale demonstration. Internet User

On August 30, only one week after the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, there was a mass demonstration in Beijing’s Chaoyang District protesting environmental pollution. Traffic in some areas was blocked for more than three hours. Many policemen were sent to the scene and protesters were beaten up.

Many bloggers on Boxun.com were complaining of the large garbage disposal plant in the Changying and Guangzhuang areas of the Chaoyang District of Beijing. The plant employs a rubbish incinerator to burn garbage, resulting in a foul smell in these areas. Fumes from the plant contain large quantities of dioxin—a carcinogen believed to raise the risk of cancer by as much as 40 times.

About one million area residents have been appealing to local authorities for years, but have been unable to make any progress. Even worse, the Beijing authorities are now constructing new apartment buildings just 550 yards south of the garbage disposal facility.

Experts describe dioxin as a kind of colorless, tasteless, yet severely refractory toxin. It has been called the “poison of the century” and has banned as a persistent organic pollutant by the Stockholm Convention.