Pollution from paper mills has become a health killer for farmers

As one of the indispensable supplies in people's daily life, paper has been quietly undergoing changes. Since the invention of papermaking by Cai Lun in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the manufacture of paper has always required a lot of trees. Now that forest resources are increasingly depleted, papermaking from waste paper has become the mainstream.
According to the statistics of China Paper Association, in 2009, the consumption of waste paper pulp in my country's paper industry reached 49.39 million tons, accounting for 62% of the total pulp consumption. From January to August 2011, my country imported 17,617,700 tons of waste paper, a year-on-year increase of 26.81% compared to 2010. However, while using waste paper to make paper is conducive to protecting forest resources, we should also see the pollution of waste plastics and ink. At present, the pollution of these two substances has threatened the health of farmers.
Waste plastics are difficult to degrade and incineration double pollution
Waste plastics are mainly mixed in waste paper. Plastics are polymer compounds that are difficult to degrade in nature, which seriously affects the growth of crops. If livestock eat plastic film, it will cause digestive tract disease and even death. In addition, if waste plastics are incinerated, they will cause serious secondary pollution to the environment. When plastic is burned, it not only produces a large amount of black smoke, but also produces dioxins, the most toxic substance so far. Dioxins enter the soil and it takes at least 15 months to decompose gradually, which can harm crops. In addition, dioxins can also seriously damage the liver and brain of animals.
In order to get rid of the "baggage" of plastic waste, some paper mills sell it to private workshops. These private workshops basically have no storage conditions. Plastic waste is piled up on the open space at will, and rats, cockroaches, mosquitoes, etc. breed in the meantime. In addition, the leachate of these garbage can pollute groundwater sources within a radius of several kilometers.
Ink contains heavy metals and other health threats
Words are generally printed on waste paper, and the ink used to print these words is another major pollutant besides waste plastics. Su Tongxing, chief engineer of China Environmental New Energy Research Institute and PhD in Chemistry from Shandong University, told reporters that ethanol, isopropanol, butanol, propanol, butanone, ethyl acetate, butyl acetate, toluene, and xylene are often used in printing inks. And other organic solvents. In the ink residue produced by waste paper making, the residual part will cause harm to the human body.
In addition, the ink residue contains a large amount of heavy metals such as lead, chromium, cadmium, mercury, etc., all of which are toxic. Take lead as an example. Lead is the only trace element that the human body does not need. It is stable, non-degradable, and hinders the formation of blood cells. When the lead in the human body accumulates to a certain level, chronic poisoning symptoms such as mental disorders, insomnia, headaches, etc. will appear. In severe cases, fatigue, loss of appetite, nausea, bloating, abdominal pain, diarrhea, etc. will appear. Lead can also enter the brain tissue through the blood and cause brain damage. Lead poisoning has a greater impact on children's intelligence.
Since a large amount of benzene-containing diluent is used in printing, the ink residue also contains a large amount of polychlorinated biphenyls. This kind of polymer has a strong irritating odor. Long-term inhalation will affect the central nervous system and cause great harm to human health. It is also a product of dioxin.
Some paper mills sell ink residues to small private workshops at high prices. In addition to separating about 50% of the pulp into industrial paper, these small workshops produce waste water and residues that are discharged into rural water ditches. A waste paper mill of a certain scale produces hundreds of thousands of tons or even hundreds of thousands of tons of ink residue each year. According to incomplete statistics, my country currently has nearly 3,000 paper mills, and most of them are more or less using waste paper to make paper, causing the country to produce tens of millions of tons of ink residue each year.
At present, the raw materials of many domestic waste paper mills are from foreign waste paper. These foreign waste papers are likely to contain a large number of pathogenic bacteria.
Wu Zhenglai, professor of epidemiology and doctoral supervisor of Peking Union Medical College, said that there must be a large number of germs hidden in foreign garbage, so the best preventive measure is to stay away.
Papermaking from waste paper helps protect forest resources, but if it fails to solve the pollution problem of waste plastics and ink residues, it will definitely threaten the health of the people, especially in rural areas where most paper mills are located.