There were turning points in the environmental protection histories of many developed countries in the last century. Serious pollution incidents awakened the public to environmental threats and forced governments to enact laws and set up powerful organs to protect the environment.

The case with China is different. Before reaching the turning point, it already has environmental laws and largely ineffective environmental protection law-enforcement departments.

Despite the laws, the cadmium pollution case in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in South China has all the elements of a major environmental disaster.

Yet, were it not for the media's exposure, the case would have been forgotten after the Stated-owned company operating the lead-zinc mine at Sanhe village in Guangxi's Daxin county declared bankruptcy - and the deaths and suffering of hundreds of villagers would have gone unnoticed.

From the mid-1950s to 2001, the company extracted lead and zinc from the mine and dumped the wastewater and other toxic residues, including cadmium, into a pool. The wastewater and tailings seeped into Sanhe's irrigation canals and, through them to farmlands on which some 500 farmers' families depended.

The water and soil contamination has extracted a heavy price from the villagers, leaving many with distorted joints and brittle bones, and endless pain, leading in many cases to early death.

The Guangxi environmental geology institute data for 2000 showed the cadmium content in irrigation water and soil was about 10 times and 50 times higher than the safety standards - and10 times higher in food grains. A Guangxi occupational disease prevention and control center survey in 2001 showed that cadmium contents in almost all 46 samples of villagers' blood and urine were way above the danger levels.