Hepeng Jia/ Beijing, China 

Chemists have helped to force a local government to relocate a billion-dollar chemical factory that posed potential environmental hazards. 

In December 2007, the municipal government of Xiamen - in southeast China's Fujian Province - decided to suspend the construction of a US$1.48 billion paraxylene factory by Taiwan petrochemical giant Xianglu. Instead, the plant will now be built on a small island belonging to the nearby Zhangzhou city. 

Scientists led by Zhao Yufen, an organic chemist at Xiamen University, had collected evidence on the environmental impacts of paraxylene, a very common material used to produce terephthalic acid for polyester production, and made petitions to governments from local to central levels. There had been little previous research in China into the effects of such compounds in the environment. 'In the production process of paraxylene, huge amounts of poisonous benzenes are needed and some of them could be released to the environment,' Zhao told Chemistry World. 

Although Xianglu's original project had passed an environmental evaluation by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), a second evaluation commissioned by the Xiamen government found that the factory could pose an environmental threat. 

'This case has shown that there is little public confidence in the official environmental evaluation,' said Zhang Pengyi, director of the Institute of Environmental Chemistry at Tsinghua University. 'It also shows that more research is needed on the impacts of common industrial chemicals.'