In 2011, Liu Yuying found a large number of opened bags filled with an unidentified grey powder dumped on local farmland in Miyun, near Beijing.The waste came from KB Autosys, a Korean company producing sets of auto brake pads. At first, the company promised to test the soil, compensate Liu, and clean up the waste. But, these promises were denied. In early 2012, authorities fined the company ¥180,000 (€22,487), but Liu was not compensated. After a preliminary sampling study of metals, the results showed antimony levels in wastes 640 - 990 times higher than regulatory limits in China. The exposure to antimony causes skin irritation, fertility problems, and lung cancer, and the USA State of California classifies antimony trioxide as a carcinogen. This story is just one example of the challenge China faces in cleaning up its polluted soil. According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, 10 million hectares or 8.3% of farmland in China is polluted. The dumping of wastes containing high concentrations of toxic wastes on farmland violates Chinese and the Solid Waste Law. Public right to know is a key principle of chemical safety but neither the landowner nor the community was ever informed about the identity or possible danger of hundreds of tons of toxic metal waste openly dumped on farmland. Public access to plant emissions including waste should be regularly provided via an accessible, free, pollutant release and transfer registry. Another key aspect to information disclosure is the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report of the KB Autosys facility. According to Chinese law, this report should be freely available to the public, however so far, neither the company nor the local Environmental Protection Bureau has agreed to provide it after requests from Nature University. Moreover in the Miyun case, the court did not require the KB Autosys (the defendant) to take responsibility to disapprove the causal relationship between the pollution and damage and it did not designate a body that could do the evaluation. This improper action blocked the ability for the plaintiff to receive compensation from a pollution case and this problem applies to many other cases in China. Clearly, the company should pay for its waste dumping, both to the landowner and the authorities who spent public money cleaning up the company’s dumped waste. KB Autosys was contacted, but declined to comment. The gLawcal Team EPSEI project Friday, 17 October 2014 (Source: China Dialogue)