A thorough census of pollution sources involving a 30,000-member task force was launched in Henan on March 11 to help better address the province's environmental issues.

According to Wang Guoping, director of the Henan Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau and head of the provincial pollution source census office, the large-scale campaign is a response to the first nationwide survey encouraged by China's environmental watchdog on tracing sources of industrial, agricultural and residential pollution.

Wang appealed on Monday to all staff in the environmental field to put the census at the top of this year's agenda.

"The result of the survey will be serving as basic data to analyze the pollution distribution in different industries and places," he said.

"It will provide evidence for mulling more effective pollution control measures."

Preparation work found that Henan has roughly 240,000 sites of pollution sources including 54,000 industrial, 63,000 residential and 125,000 agricultural sources.

According to Jiao Wanyi, official of the provincial environmental bureau, residential pollution is currently the most severe source in the province.

It includes kitchen trash, recycled paper, metal, plastic, glass, hazardous trash and sewage.

"However, it's a different story to before 2005 when industrial pollution as a major source plagued the province," Jiao told China Daily.

All papermaking factories that failed to meet clean production standards between 2003 and 2005 have been renovated or banned from operating as part of an effort to clean up the industry notorious for polluting.

By 2007 the province had taken a lead in launching sewage plants in all 108 counties and 18 cities, which has greatly enlarged the industrial treatment capacity.

Meanwhile, solid waste disposal plants for related industry were also built.

A big agricultural province, Henan suffers from a high usage of fertilizer, pesticide and a large amount of animal waste.

"The amount is unknown but farmers are getting to know the risk and danger caused by overusing them we will be evaluating the risk by this survey," Jiao said.

The provincial government dedicated 5 million yuan (US$690,000) to the census project of provincial level polluters.

(China Daily March 13, 2008)