The cancer rate among residents of Liuqing County, Taiwan, is 1.29 times higher than that in other places, and the proportion of elderly women is even higher.

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This year, the School of Public Health of National Taiwan University published a paper entitled "A significant increase in Cancer among residents in neighboring Petrochemical Industrial areas: a 12-year retrospective Generation study" to explore whether residents in the vicinity of Yunlin Liuqing have a higher incidence of cancer. Yuan Tzu-hsuan, an assistant professor at National Taiwan University's School of Public Health, says that this study, in line with previous studies, has once again proved that residents of Taixi and Mailiao, who are closest to Liuqing, are more likely to develop cancer.

And the study has ruled out the incidence of cancer caused by personal habits such as smoking and eating betel nut. The incidence of cancer in Taixi and Mailiao residents in the high exposure group was 1.29 times higher than that in other townships in Yunlin in the low exposure group. The types of cancers include nasopharyngeal carcinoma, esophageal cancer, small bowel cancer, colorectal cancer, skin cancer, breast cancer, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, brain cancer and thyroid cancer, of which small, colorectal and cervical cancer are the most common.

The study confirmed that the heavy metals in the air came from Liuqing (Photography / Xu Zhentang)

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