[Noisebridge-discuss] lead poisoning in China

[Jake]

wash your hands after soldering, although it could be worse:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/world/asia/15lead.html

Lead Poisoning in China: The Hidden Scourge

MENGXI VILLAGE, China . On a chilly evening early last month, a mob of 
more than 200 people gathered in this tiny eastern China village at the 
entrance to the Zhejiang Haijiu Battery Factory, a maker of lead-acid 
batteries for motorcycles and electric bikes. They shouldered through an 
outer brick wall, swept into the factory office and, in an outpouring of 
pure fury, smashed the cabinets, desks and computers inside.

Sim Chi Yin for the New York Times
Han Tiantian, 3, of Mengxi Village, China, has more than four times 
China's allowable blood lead level. Her mother, Wen Yuni, and father, Han 
Zongyuan, have both worked in a battery factory.

News had spread that workers and villagers had been poisoned by lead 
emissions from the factory, which had operated for six years despite 
flagrant environmental violations. But the truth was even worse: 233 
adults and 99 children were ultimately found to have concentrations of 
lead in their blood, up to seven times the level deemed safe by the 
Chinese government.

One of them was 3-year-old Han Tiantian, who lived just across the road 
from the plant. Her father, Han Zongyuan, a factory worker, said he 
learned in March that she had absorbed enough lead to irreversibly 
diminish her intellectual capacity and harm her nervous system.

.At the moment I heard the doctor say that, my heart was shattered,. Mr. 
Han said in an interview last week. .We wanted this child to have 
everything. That.s why we worked this hard. That.s why we poisoned 
ourselves at this factory. Now it turns out the child is poisoned too. I 
have no words to describe how I feel..

Such scenes of heartbreak and anger have been repeated across China in 
recent months with the discovery of case after case of mass lead poisoning 
. together with instances in which local governments tried to cover them 
up.

In the past two and a half years, thousands of workers, villagers and 
children in at least 9 of mainland China.s 31 province-level regions have 
been found to be suffering from toxic levels of lead exposure, mostly 
caused by pollution from battery factories and metal smelters. The cases 
underscore a pattern of government neglect seen in industry after industry 
as China strives for headlong growth with only embryonic safeguards.

Chasing the political dividends of economic development, local officials 
regularly overlook environmental contamination, worker safety and dangers 
to public health until forced to confront them by episodes like the Haijiu 
factory riot.

A report by Human Rights Watch released Wednesday states that some local 
officials have reacted to mass poisonings by arbitrarily limiting lead 
testing, withholding and possibly manipulating test results, denying 
proper treatment to children and adults and trying to silence parents and 
activists.

.What we are trying to underscore is how little has been done to address 
the massive impact of lead pollution in China,. Joe Amon, the 
organization.s health and human rights director, said in an interview. .It 
really has affected a whole generation of kids..

In more developed nations, where lead pollution has been tightly regulated 
for decades, a pattern of lead poisoning like China.s would most likely be 
deemed a public-health emergency.

High levels can damage the brain, kidney, liver, nerves and stomach and, 
in extreme cases, cause death. Children are particularly susceptible 
because they absorb lead more easily than adults.

.No blood lead level has been found to be safe for a child,. Dr. Mary Jean 
Brown, chief of the lead poisoning prevention branch of the Centers for 
Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview last week.

Here, Chinese leaders have acknowledged that lead contamination is a grave 
issue and have raised the priority of reducing heavy-metal pollution in 
the government.s latest five-year plan, presented in March. But despite 
efforts to step up enforcement, including suspending production last month 
at a number of battery factories, the government.s response remains 
faltering.

At a meeting last month of China.s State Council, after yet another 
disclosure of mass poisoning, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao scolded 
Environmental Minister Zhou Shengxian for the lack of progress, according 
to an individual with high-level government ties who spoke on the 
condition of anonymity.

The government has not ordered a nationwide survey of children.s blood 
lead levels, so the number of children who are at risk is purely a matter 
of guesswork. Mass poisonings like that at the Haijiu factory typically 
come to light only after suspicious parents seek hospital tests, then 
alert neighbors or co-workers to the alarming results.


The few published studies point to a huge problem. One 2001 research paper 
called lead poisoning one of the most common pediatric health problems in 
China. A 2006 review of existing data suggested that one-third of Chinese 
children suffer from elevated blood lead levels.
Enlarge This Image

Sim Chi Yin for the New York Times
Liu Kaifang, 6, drinks his daily vial of calcium and zinc solution -- the 
only medication the local hospital prescribed scores of children in the 
area found to have high lead levels in their blood.

Sim Chi Yin for the New York Times
Sun Guotai, 5, was among 99 children living close to a lead acid battery 
factory in the central Chinese province of Zhejiang found to have high 
lead levels in their blood.

The state Health Ministry said in 2006 that a nationwide test for children 
was unnecessary because their blood lead levels had been falling. But 
since then, a new source of lead pollution . factories that produce 
lead-acid batteries for electric bikes, motorcycles and cars . has emerged 
with a vengeance.

The industry has grown by 20 percent a year for the past five or six 
years, and is expected to expand further, according to Wang Jingzhong, 
vice director of the China Battery Industry Association. China now has 
some 2,000 factories and 1,000 battery-recycling plants. For regulators, 
Mr. Wang said, .It is a chaotic situation..

Enforcement is spotty at best. Shen Yulin, the environmental protection 
director for Deqing County, where the Haijiu factory is located, said 65 
inspectors were responsible for a region of nearly 400 square miles, with 
more than 2,000 factories.

Haijiu breezed through six years of inspections, even though many workers 
say they were repeatedly hospitalized for lead poisoning. Only after last 
month.s protest did authorities criticize the plant for a host of 
violations and order the plant closed and production lines razed.

At a press conference this month, Li Ganjie, the vice minister for 
environmental protection, said that every suspected case of lead poisoning 
is fully investigated and that .the people involved, whether they are 
children or adults, are well-tested and treated..

Interviews over the past month with 20 families in Henan and Zhejiang 
Provinces indicate otherwise. Near Jiyuan City, in Henan Province, nearly 
1,000 children from 10 villages were found to have elevated blood lead 
levels in 2009. Government officials ordered the children treated, 
families relocated and the smelters cleaned up.

But a recent visitor found children still playing in the streets of one 
village literally in the shadow of a privately-owned lead smelter that 
nightly belches plumes of dark smoke. In interviews, their parents and 
grandparents said that local hospitals now refuse to administer new blood 
lead level tests, even if the families pay out of their own pockets.

.The children are not healthy. We don.t know how sick they are, and we 
can.t find out,. said one 66-year-old villager whose two grandsons were 
found to have blood lead levels two and three times above the norm when 
tested in 2009.

Local officials appeared determined to suppress such complaints. Within a 
few hours of a visitor.s arrival this month, Jiyuan City.s propaganda 
chief appeared with three carloads of plainclothes officers, bringing all 
reporting and interviewing to a screeching halt.

That would not surprise Ye Cai.e, who lives near the Suji battery factory 
in Zhejiang Province, 200 miles southeast of Mengxi. After tests showed 53 
children and 120 adults suffered from excessive lead levels, Ms. Ye said 
that local officials said: .Whoever makes noise will not receive 
compensation or medical treatment..

Migrant workers and their families were also left out of the program, 
villagers said. Yang Fufen, 40, said her 2-year-old son tested at more 
than three times the allowable blood lead level in March, but has received 
no medical attention, apparently because her legal residence is elsewhere.

At the Haijiu Battery Factory, which exports to the United States, 
regulation of lead emissions was not so much lax as nonexistent.

The factory.s opening in 2005 brought more than 1,000 jobs. Local 
authorities allowed the plant to expand to within a rice paddy of the 
village. They also ignored the breakdown of ventilation equipment and the 
building of a hostel for workers and their spouses and children on factory 
grounds.

Workers say managers simply slowed down production lines when inspectors 
came. One worker said he had watched a supervisor cover a device that 
tests for lead emissions in the air with his cap, then whisk the 
inspectors away for tea.

It did not take long for problems to surface. Workers said they repeatedly 
had tested above the occupational limit for blood lead levels and were 
sent to the local hospital, where drugs were injected intravenously to 
reduce the level and toxicity of lead in their bodies.

Zhou Zuyin, 42, said he was hospitalized for treatment of lead poisoning 
every year for four years, returning each time to his job of smoothing the 
edges of lead sheets. Even after a test revealed liver damage, he said, 
.The factory said it was normal..

He said his biggest worry now is his 13-year-old son.s health. A blood 
test showed the boy had nearly double what China considers a safe lead 
level. .He is getting more and more scared,. Mr. Zhou said. .I don.t know 
what to say to him. I just feel totally powerless..

Zhao Guogeng, vice president of Zhejiang Haijiu Battery Co., said the 
company is covering the medical bills of lead victims. Authorities said 
the factory.s legal representative has been arrested and eight officials 
disciplined. .This will never happen again,. Zhang Linhua, spokesman for 
Deqing County, declared last Thursday.

Maybe not there. But not three days later came a dispatch from a town 55 
miles southeast of Mengxi Village: 103 children and 26 adults were found 
to be severely poisoned by lead pollution from tinfoil processing plants, 
according to China.s official Xinhua news agency. Moderately poisoned: 
494.