China to relocate 64,000 villagers

Thousands of Chinese villagers are to be moved because of chemical contamination of their soil and water.

Residents of nearly 2,000 villages in Shaanxi province are to be moved over the next five years.

A third of residents of those villages suffer from heart disease and physical deformities.

Sometimes fatal, the ailments are blamed on a lack of the trace mineral selenium in the soil or on too much fluorine in drinking water.

Authorities say it is cheaper to abandon the villages than to bring in safe water and food.

The villages also suffer from fluorine poisoning, which can cause arthritis and even kidney failure.

In the entire province, about 100,000 people have been disabled by Kashin-Beck disease, which stunts the bones, and Keshan disease, an often fatal heart disease, as well as fluorine poisoning.

The move underscores China's struggle with so-called endemic diseases caused by too little or too much of certain minerals in the diet.

Such diseases are rare in developed nations because of better nutrition but they are China's most severe curable health problem.

The diseases go back for centuries in China although it is only in recent decades that a serious effort has been made to eradicate them.