About 16.1 percent of soil in the Chinese mainland is polluted, an official report said on Thursday.
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About 19.4 percent of farming land is polluted, said the report issued jointly by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Land and Resources.
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The general condition of the land is "not optimistic" as the quality of farming land is worrying and deserted industrial and mining land suffers serious pollution, according to the report.
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It was based on a survey conducted from April, 2005, to December last year on about 630 square km of land across the country, except Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
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The pollution has been caused by complicated factors over a long period of time. "The main pollution source is human industrial and agricultural activities," the report said.
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In breakdown, 11.2 percent of the surveyed land suffers slight pollution, while 1.1 percent is severely polluted.
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About 2.3 percent of the land is lightly polluted and 1.5 percent suffers medium pollution.
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Some 10 percent of woodland and 10.4 percent of grassland is polluted, the report added.
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About 82.8 percent of the polluted land is contaminated by inorganic materials and the top three pollutants are cadmium, nickel and arsenic. Â