Shanghai has set up its first ever soil rehabilitation center to clean up industrial pollution that can pose a potential threat to people's health and the city's ecology, the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau announced yesterday. 

Officials said the center's major mission at present is to improve the land that will be used for the 2010 World Expo.
   
Seventy percent of the land that will be used for the Expo was used for industrial purposes in the past, and some is polluted "in different degrees," according to bureau officials.
   
"Pollution by persistent toxic substances can't be overlooked in the city. The soil has to be rehabilitated to get rid of the lasting toxic substances," the bureau said in a statement.
   
In 2002, the city enacted regulations that state the property used by enterprises or laboratories producing dangerous waste must be tested if the land is transferred to a different user.
   
If the land is found to be polluted, the soil must be rehabilitated. But bureau officials refused to say whether they have taken any action to rehabilitate polluted soil since 2002, only noting they "have kept an eye on the problem.
   
Officials say soil pollution exists in downtown industrial land, suburban farms, the bottom of Suzhou Creek and the mouth of the Yangtze River.
   
Polluted soil was also found in five future World Expo sites.
   
The new center will use chemical and biological treatments to remove the toxic substances from soil.

(Shanghai Daily April 20, 2005)