China: 600 Kids ill due to Lead poisoning

[GoFlyKiteNow]

600 children ill due to lead poisoning

165 in serious condition

17 August 2009

Hundreds of villagers in China’s Shaanxi province stormed a lead smelting plant on Monday after it emerged that more than 600 children in two villages had taken ill with lead poisoning.

Monday’s incident is the latest in a number of recent cases of public unrest caused by environmental pollution by factories in China’s provinces. While the government has in recent years begun to strengthen its environmental pollution laws, violations are still widespread at the provincial level.

Officials said on Monday the Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting Group in central China’s Shaanxi province was responsible for poisoning at least 615 children in two villages near the township of Changqing located near its plant. Officials found that lead content in the water and soil in surrounding areas was dangerously high.

Out of the 615 children who had taken ill with lead poisoning, 166 were in a serious condition and admitted to local hospitals. Officials said in some cases the lead content found in their blood was more than four times safe levels. “The medical test by doctors showed that for 20 out of 30 children the lead in blood was excessive, and 10 had more than 200 mg of lead per litre of blood,” Zhang Yongxiang, a local villager, told the State-run China Daily newspaper. The normal lead content in blood is between 0 and 100 mg per litre. “One girl was taken to a hospital because her lead content was 306 mg,” he said.

While environmental laws have been strengthened at the central level, enforcement at the local level remains weak, and many say influential companies, which often enjoy close relationships with local governments, escape strict enforcement. It emerged on Monday that Dongling had even passed emission standards tests and inspections conducted by local authorities.

Another high-profile case last year saw more than 3 lakh children fall ill after consuming milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical melamine. Later, investigations found that the Sanlu company, China’s largest dairy producer, had for months covered up tests which had found its milk products to be unsafe. It also emerged that Sanlu had close ties with the provincial government in Hebei where the company was based.

Next month, the first ever environmental protection lawsuit filed against a government body in China on behalf of residents will be heard in Guizhou province. Usually, affected residents receive little compensation given the weakness in enforcement of environmental laws. But a local municipal court last month, for the first time, accepted a public interest petition filed against the government for a construction project that polluted two water bodies.

“No matter what the conclusion is, we hope it will serve as a warning to government departments that they should fulfil their duty to protect the environment,” Liu Haiying, a judge at the Qingzhen municipal court in Guizhou told China Daily. “They need to gradually realise they are not only under the supervision of the Communist Party and other administrative departments, but also under the watch of citizens.”

 

[Watchman]

600 of the whole of china is blink of an eye.

1 day in any major city, 1000s are born daily!

 

[Leongsam]

Serve them right. They chinks have spent the last few years poisoning the rest of the world. It's about time they poisoned themselves for a change.

 

[Watchman]

Angry because their peasant parents are just as stupid as oppose to lying politicians and businessmen in the area.


XI'AN, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Several hundred villagers in northwest China's Shaanxi Province broke into a smelting plant Monday to protest the lead poisoning of more than 600 children.

Smelting plant closed in Chinese lead poisoning probe
Their anger escalated after a teenage student in Changqing Township in Fengxiang County in Baoji attempted to commit suicide by drinking pesticide Sunday after her request for a blood test was denied by her parents.

Ma Jiaojiao, 19, Monday said she had asked her mother for money Sunday to get a blood test because she feared that she might be suffering from lead poisoning. Government-funded tests cover only children under 14.

"My mom said it was unnecessary because I much older than 14," Ma said from her ward at the People's Hospital in Baoji. "We had a bad quarrel."

Out of rage and grief, she bought some pesticide and swallowed two mouthfuls at around 6 p.m. Her mother found her shortly afterward and sent her to a clinic. Ma was later transferred to Baoji for treatment.

A doctor said Monday Ma was out of danger.

Ma, born in 1990, is about to start her final year at senior high school next month. "I still think I need a blood test," she said.

The news lead poisoning had led a suicide attempt spread quickly among the villagers Monday morning. Several hundred swarmed to the factory area of Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting Co.,dismantled 300 meters of fencing around a railway reserved for the company, and smashed trucks and other vehicles.

The plant's operations were suspended on August 6.

At least 10 trucks that had carried coal to the plant were damaged. Some of them were from Henan Province and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

At 11:30 a.m., about 100 policemen were mobilized to maintain order.

Baoji Mayor Dai Zhengshe arrived at the site just after midday and called on the villagers to exercise restraint. He has been appointed as head of a newly-established pollution control team and said he was willing to settle the villagers' relocations and medical issues through dialogue.

The city government, starting Monday afternoon, mobilized more than 200 officials to hear the villagers' woes and help settle their issues.

By 2:30 p.m., most of the protesters had been appeased and gone home.

At least 615 children, of a total 731 under the age of 14 living in two villages near the plant showed excessive lead levels in their blood systems after they had undergone medical tests. Of 166 serious cases diagnosed as having lead levels of more than 250mg a liter of blood compared with the normal zero to 100 mg a liter, 154 were hospitalized.

No action has been taken as yet to find out how lead poisoning has affected adults.

Residents living within a radius of 500 meters from the plant should have been relocated by this year according to a deal reached between the plant and Fengxiang county government before the plant opened in 2006. Relocation, however, is running far behind the government's schedule and only 156 of the 581 families involved had moved to new homes.

The government of Fengxiang County began building new homes last Thursday for the remaining 425 families, who are expected to move to the new community, about 1,350 meters from the smelter, within two years.

At Saturday's press conference, the local environment watchdog blamed the smelter for the lead poisoning.

"Lead content in the air along the main routes near the plant is 6.3 times that of monitoring sites 350 meters from the roads," said Han Qinyou, head of the Baoji Municipal Environmental Protection Monitoring Station.

But the official said lab tests on samples also showed "ground and surface water, soil and the smelter's waste discharge had all met national standards."

The words sparked doubt and controversy among villagers and millions of Internet users monitoring the situation.

Even an executive with the smelter admitted meeting "national standards for industrial discharges could still be way behind minimum requirements for habitation."

The smelter, which produces zinc, lead and coke, accounted for 17 percent of Fengxiang County's GDP last year.

 

[Watchman]

Chinese Workers Say Illness Is Real, Not Hysteria

The New York Times reports on textile workers who were hospitalized with symptoms including convulsions, breathing difficulties, vomiting and temporary paralysis, but told by the government that they were suffering from mass hysteria:

Ms. Tian and scores of other workers say the “unknown substances” came from a factory across the street that produces aniline, a highly toxic chemical used in the manufacture of polyurethane, rubber, herbicides and dyes.

As soon as the Jilin Connell Chemical Plant started production this spring, local hospitals began receiving stricken workers from the acrylic yarn factory 100 yards downwind from Connell’s exhaust stacks. On some days, doctors were overwhelmed and patients were put two to a bed.

A clear case of chemical contamination? Not so, say Chinese health officials who contend that the episode is a communal outbreak of psychogenic illness, also called mass hysteria. The blurry vision, muscle spasms and pounding headaches, according to a government report issued in May, were simply psychological reactions to a feared chemical exposure.

During a four-day visit, a team of public health experts from Beijing talked to doctors, looked at blood tests and then advised bedridden workers to “get a hold of their emotions,” according to patients and their families.

 

[Watchman]

A Lead poisoning, survivor !

 

[Watchman]

WND Exclusive HOMELAND INSECURITY

Is China trying to poison Americans and their pets?
U.S. market flooded with foods unfit for humans, tainted with carcinogens, pesticides, bacteria, drugs
Posted: May 27, 2007
1:00 am Eastern

© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com


WASHINGTON – While Americans are still recovering from a scandal over poison pet foods imported from China, FDA inspectors report tainted food imports intended for American humans are being rejected with increasing frequency because they are filthy, are contaminated with pesticides and tainted with carcinogens, bacteria and banned drugs.

Last month, like most months, China topped the list of countries whose products were refused by the FDA – and that list includes many countries, including Mexico and Canada, who export far more food products to the U.S. than China.

Some 257 refusals of Chinese products were recorded in April. By comparison, only 140 were from Mexico and only 23 from Canada.

Refused by the FDA in April because they were "filthy":

* salted bean curd cubes in brine with chili and sesame oil
* dried apple
* dried peach
* dried pear
* dried round bean curd
* dried mushroom
* olives
* frozen bay scallops
* frozen Pacific cod
* sardines
* frozen seafood mix
* fermented bean curd

Among the foods rejected because they were contaminated with pesticides:

* frozen eel
* ginseng
* frozen red raspberry crumble
* mushrooms

Frozen catfish was stopped because it was laced with banned antibiotics. Scallops and sardines were turned away because they were coated with putrefying bacteria.

Toothbrushes were rejected last month because they were improperly labeled. And last week the FDA found Chinese toothpaste contaminated with a chemical used in antifreeze – the same chemical that killed people in Panama last year when it turned up in cough syrup.

Just three days ago, the U.S. warned consumers not to buy or eat imported fish labeled as monkfish, which actually may be puffer fish, containing a potentially deadly toxin called tetrodotoxin. Two people in the Chicago area became ill after consuming homemade soup containing the fish. One was hospitalized due to severe illness.

The FDA is also on the lookout for vegetable proteins contaminated with melamine – the chemical that killed American cats and dogs when it was imported from China in pet food.

In the past year, the FDA rejected more than twice as many food shipments from China as from all other countries combined.

Most of the time, the reason listed is simply "filthy," the official term used when inspectors smell decomposition or gross contamination of food.

Officials say FDA inspectors examine only a tiny percentage of the food imported from foreign countries – about 1 percent -- meaning most of the contaminated products make it inside the country and to the shelves of retailers.

 

[borom]

.... China topped the list of countries whose products were refused by the FDA....... salted bean curd cubes,dried apple//peach/pear/round bean curd/mushroom/olives; frozen bay scallops/Pacific cod/seafood mix/eel/catfish/red raspberry ; fermented bean curd; sardines ;ginseng ;mushrooms ; Toothbrushes ; monkfish which actually may be puffer fish.containing ...toxin called tetrodotoxin. .... the FDA rejected more than twice as many food shipments from China as from all other countries combined.....FDA inspectors examine only a tiny percentage of the food imported from foreign countries – about 1 percent -- meaning most of the contaminated products make it inside the country and to the shelves of retailers.

Alarming to find out that only 1% of the food are examined and of those rejected, most from China.
Wonder why no such news from Singapore which is still in love with all things mainland Chinese.With the mass import of mainland chinese into Singapore, its a matter of time before we suffer the adverse consequences of contaminating our country with such "talent".

The only way to deal with this is to avoid mainland Chinese altogether, whether the food, products, shares or people.

For those who cannot do without things chinese,can look to Hong Kong, Taiwan and of course Singapore.Most of the products/food you receive from many countries in South East Asia are also through overseas Chinese hands that dominated the economies of these countries.