【正文】 Baotou, the fish all died. They dump the waste – the chemicals into the river. You cannot eat the fish because they are polluted.” Some 150 million people depend on the river as their primary source of water.Under traditional technology means, refining rare earth elements requires such chemicals as ammonium bicarbonate and oxalic acid. The potential health hazards of ammonium bicarbonate include: Irritation to the respiratory tract if inhaled, irritation to the gastrointestinal tract if ingested, redness and pain if it es in contact with the eyes, and redness, itching, and pain if it es in contact with the skin. Oxalic acid is poisonous and potentially fatal if swallowed. It is also corrosive and causes severe irritation and burns to the skin, eyes, and respiratory tract, is harmful if inhaled or absorbed through the skin, and can cause kidney damage. These and other chemicals often find their way into the Yellow River.Safety standards in China are lax. “People in their 30s have died of cancer working around the mines, possibly from radioactive materials,” said one local source. “I visited a factory many times. When I visit a factory or workshop, I tell the director of the workshop, ‘would you tell the laborers to put their mask on when they are doing their job?’ He said, ‘Oh yeah. We do every time, but it’s too hot. They don’t want to keep their mask on.’ You can see that the air is dirty and they are breathing it all in.” The most mon disease in Baotou is pneumoconiosis, better known as black lung. There are 5,387 residents in Baotou who suffer from black lung, which makes up more than 50 percent of the cases in the autonomous region.While China might have general pollution control standards, the country has never actually worked out pollutant discharge standards for the rare earth industry. As the rare earth industry in China has rapidly grown, there has been no effective way to control the usual pollutants such as ammonia, nitrogen, and thorium dust, which are emitted during the production phase. Furthermore, general health and safety regulations are often ignored for a number of reasons, including:? The industry is large and challenging to monitor.? People and panies are not being held accountable. For example, in Western society, if an employee dies or bees ill, repercussions could include a lawsuit or lifelong pension which the pany is obligated to fulfill. This is not the case in China.Domestic consumption is a priorityWith billion people and the fastest growing economy in the world, China is faced with the challenging task of ensuring it has adequate natural resources to sustain economic growth, while also trying to appease the international munity, which has been protesting China’s cuts in rare earth export quotas.According to Wang Caifeng, in 2008 China used 70,000 tons of rare earth elements. Global consumption was 130,000 tons. China exported 10,000 tons of rare earth magnets worth $400 million and 34,600 tons of other rare earth products worth $500 million.There are numerous examples that point to China’s anticipated increase in rare earth consumption. For example, at the end of July 2008, China had 600 million cell phone users. Less than one year later, by the end of March 2009, China had 670 million cell phone users. New technologies, such as the third generation (3G) networks, have boosted the sale of cell phones, a trend which will likely continue as more and more Chinese citizens buy cell phones and others upgrade to the new technologies. Putting it into perspective, in China, approximately 50 percent of the population has cell phones. CTIA, the International Association for Wireless Telemunications, reported in October 2008 that the . (with a population of 304 million people as of July 2008) had more than 262 million wireless subscribers. This means that 86 percent of the entire . population had cell phones. If China were to follow the same technological growth patterns as the ., the country could one day have approximately billion cell phones or more.In another example, the use of solar and wind power are set to increase exponentially in China. Green energy technology is expected to bee the largest consumer of rare earth elements in the future. According to Mark Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Molycorp Minerals, the pany that owns and operates the Mountain Pass rare earth mine in California, “We’ve coined the term, ‘the green elements.’ because there are so many applications right now hybrid electric vehicles, wind powered generation …permanent magnet generators, pact fluorescent light bulbs … Just to name a few. Rare earths are absolutely indispensable. They (green technologies) will not work without rare earths.”China’s consumption of rare earth elements is also expected to increase dramatically as more and more foreign panies move their production sites to China to take advantage of the lower cost of rare earths and therefore reduce their overall production costs. This is part of China’s larg