China is "seriously dealing with" hazardous waste threatening the environment after several incidents of illegal dumping and transferring of abandoned heavy metals, a senior environmental official said Thursday.

Treating hazardous waste will become a priority in China's pollution prevention work over the next five years, Vice Minister of Environmental Protection Zhang Lijun said during a national teleconference.

"Efforts should be made to curb the rising amount of pollution caused by hazardous waste," said Zhang, adding that hazardous waste has "seriously threatened environmental safety and damaged people's health."

Citing a recent incident in southwestern Yunnan Province's city of Qujing in which chromium residues were illegally dumped, Zhang said it had an "extremely bad environmental impact."

Measures preventing such incidents include strictly examining and approving new projects as well as paying special attention to new projects that involve the utilization or disposal of hazardous wastes, Zhang said.

Construction projects in China must undergo environmental impact evaluations by local environmental protection bureaus both before the start and after the completion of the projects.

"Authorities should stop accepting environmental impact evaluation documents from Qujing until the city completes the treatment of the dumped chromium residues and tainted soil," Zhang said.

Companies running businesses involving hazardous wastes should publish annual environmental reports so that they can receive media and public supervision, he said.

Harsher penalties should be imposed on companies polluting the environment and they should also be required to clean up soil and underground water tainted by dumped hazardous waste, he said.

Zhang said, currently, irregularities in stockpiles, landfills and random dumps of hazardous waste have become a major source of soil and water pollution.

Capabilities for treating and utilizing this waste "far from meet requirements," and there are many illicit companies running businesses involving hazardous waste, frequently violating laws to randomly dump these wastes, he said.

A national campaign will be held this year to check the chromium salt and polysilicon industries and the operations of the hazardous waste treatment facility sector, as well as the sludge from sewage treatment plants and electronic waste, he said.