NEWS RELEASE                                                                                                    MARCH 2014

Asian Remediation Market to Exceed $5.4 Billion Next Year

Asia will spend $2.4 billion for groundwater remediation next year and $3 billion for soil cleanup, according to the McIlvaine Company in its most recent update of Site Remediation World Markets. Eighty-three percent of the total will be spent in East Asia.

The market for site remediation in China is growing at double-digit rates due to a number of factors. The country contains 20 percent of the world’s population, but covers only 9 percent of the landmass on earth.  The demand for food is increasing.  The focus on industrialization has led to more and more contamination of the soil and water.  Crops in some instances are cultivated on contaminated soil and irrigated with contaminated water. 

China is the major producer of rare earth metals in the world.  However, rare earth mining and refining have caused serious pollution across the country.  For twenty years, the industry has been regulated only marginally. Groundwater contaminated by radionuclides at rare earth refinery sites in northern China, near the Mongolian border, has been migrating toward the Yellow River, which supplies drinking water for 150 million people. 

High cancer rates and other health problems linked to the refining of rare earths have forced the evacuation of entire villages between the city of Baotou and the Yellow River in Inner Mongolia. The Chinese government is spending billions of dollars to clean up the pollution.

The market in Japan is significantly affected by just one remediation site (Fukushima) and Japan plans to spend $970 million to build a special facility to store tens of thousands of tons of soil contaminated by radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Hundreds of millions per year is being spent on chemicals and other methods for treating contaminants in the water.

India and other West Asian countries have problems equal to those in East Asia but not the political will or funds to make as large an effort as is being made in Eat Asia.

For more information on Site Remediation World Markets, click on: http://home.mcilvainecompany.com/index.php/remediation