Lead Poisoning 中鉛毒

Smelter poisons 1,354 in China
High lead levels found in children
By Michael Wines, New York Times | August 21, 2009

BEIJING - Lead pollution from a newly opened and unlicensed manganese smelter has poisoned more than 1,300 children in southeastern China’s Hunan province, state-run media said yesterday, the second mass lead poisoning in the past month.

Officials in Wenping, 970 miles south of Beijing, shut down the smelter, the Wugang Fine-Processed Manganese Smelting Factory, last week and detained two of its owners after about 1,000 local residents protested the poisoning, the English-language state newspaper China Daily reported. The plant’s general manager remains at large.

Tests since then have found elevated levels of lead in the blood of 1,354 children, about seven of every 10 children who were examined, the official news agency, Xinhua, reported. The severity of the poisoning cannot be measured without further testing; 17 of the 83 children who received those tests have been hospitalized.

Lead poisoning damages the nervous and reproductive systems and can permanently cripple children’s growth and intellectual development.

The report of poisoning in Wenping followed a similar event in Shaanxi province, in north-central China, where state news reports say 851 children living near the nation’s fourth-largest smelter have tested positive for lead poisoning since early August. More than 170 have been hospitalized.

Angry residents of two Shaanxi villages reportedly marched to the smelter on Monday, tearing down fences and attacking trucks before police officers restored order. Local officials have promised that the smelter, which produces lead and zinc, will not reopen until it meets pollution standards.

On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that the Shaanxi smelter, in Changqing town, was under heavy guard by police and plainclothes officers. The officers sought to interrupt journalists’ interviews with local residents.

Pollution is a serious problem across China, where breakneck industrial development has fouled both air and water to sometimes extraordinary degrees.

Although the national government has promised cleanup measures, the World Bank says 59 percent of the water in China’s seven major rivers is unfit to drink, and the government says that the air in about a quarter of cities is unhealthy.

The Wugang manganese smelter is located in one of China’s major iron-and-steel centers. Manganese is often added to steel to increase its tensile strength.

According to Xinhua, seven other smelters also operate in Wugang City, an area of about 700,000 residents that includes Wenping town.

Wugang City’s deputy environment chief, Huang Wenbin, was quoted by Xinhua as saying that the smelter opened in May 2008 without required environmental permits. Other news reports stated that it began producing manganese about a year ago.

A kindergarten and a primary and middle school are located within 1,700 feet of the smelter, Xinhua said.