Clash at China smelter after 100s of kids poisoned

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CHINA - 17 AUGUST 2009

BEIJING – Police clashed with residents of two neighboring villages in northern China where nearly all the children were poisoned by lead apparently from a nearby smelter, reports said Monday, the latest sign of growing anger over China's rampant industrial pollution.

Several hundred villagers tore down fences and blocked traffic outside the Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting Co. in Shaanxi province after news of the poisoning emerged last week, state media and villagers said. Fighting between angry parents and scores of police broke out Sunday, and trucks delivering coal to the plant were stoned.

No immediate word on injuries or arrests was available. Local officials, police and people at the company refused to confirm the reports.

China's breakneck economic development has left much of its soil, air and waterways dangerously polluted, and environmental showdowns with outraged residents are growing. Authorities routinely pledge to close down polluting industries, but often back down because of their importance to the local economy.

At least 615 out of 731 children in two villages near the Dongling smelter have tested positive for lead poisoning, which can damage the nervous and reproductive systems and cause high blood pressure, anemia and memory loss. Lead levels in the children were more than 10 times the level considered safe by China.

Air quality tests done near the smelting plant in Shaanxi found unusually high lead levels, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, although officials say groundwater, surface water, soil and company waste discharge all meet national standards.

Li Li, a resident of Gaozuitou village, located about half a mile (1 kilometer) from the plant, said in a telephone interview that her two daughters began developing blotchy skin, yellowing hair and memory problems as far back as January, but doctors had been unable to explain the cause.

After word broke last week of the lead contamination, Li said she took the girls, aged 9 and 12, in for tests and both were found to have high levels of lead.

Some people have already sent their children to schools farther away, said Li, 36, who said her cabbage and tomato crops have withered as well.

"You can see how bad the pollution is, but we don't have any money. Now, I sleep badly and I can't eat well either," Li said.

Local officials plan to relocate all 581 households living within 1,600 feet (500 meters) of the factory in the next two years, according to Xinhua.

It was unclear whether the plant had been closed and what its future might be.

In a separate report Monday, Xinhua said a chemical company boss in central China was sentenced to ten years in jail on Friday for criminal environmental negligence after his plant illegally dumped chemicals into a river in central China's Jiangsu province.

Earlier reports said the Biaoxin Chemical Company in Yancheng city had been illegally dumping chemicals in the Xiangyanggang River since 2007. An investigation was triggered after the plant discharged a massive amount of phenol in February this year, forcing two water plants to shut for three days and cutting water supplies to at least 200,000 people. Phenol is used to make products such as air fresheners, medical ointments, cosmetics and sunscreens.

Biaoxin's chairman, Hu Wenbiao, filed an appeal with the Yancheng Intermediate People's Court on Monday, Xinhua said.


Source: Associated Press

 

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Chinese mayor apologizes for lead poisoning
China - 18 AUGUST 2009

CHANGQING, China – A mayor apologized to residents of two Chinese villages where more than 600 children were sickened by lead poisoning, saying a nearby smelter targeted by angry protests would not reopen until it meets health standards, state media said Tuesday.

Authorities have promised to relocate hundreds of families within two years, the official Xinhua News Agency said, but residents were not reassured.

"If they relocate us to these nearby places, who can guarantee that our babies will be safe?" said farmer Deng Xiaoyan, a resident of Sunjianantou, one of the affected villages. She said a recent test showed her 3-year-old daughter had high levels of lead.

Environmental problems have escalated as China's economy booms, sometimes prompting violent protests. Counting on lax enforcement of regulations, some companies find it easier and cheaper to dump poisons into rivers and the ground rather than dispose of them safely.

At least 615 of 731 children in two villages near the Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting Co. plant in Shaanxi province's Changqing town have tested positive for lead poisoning. Some had lead levels 10 times the level China considers safe.

Lead poisoning can damage the nervous and reproductive systems and cause high blood pressure, anemia and memory loss. It is especially harmful to young children, pregnant women and fetuses, and that damage is usually irreversible, according to the World Health Organization.

The mayor of Baoji city, which oversees Changqing, arrived at the plant Monday as hundreds of villagers were protesting, tearing down fences and blocking traffic outside the factory, Xinhua reported. Dai Zhengshe apologized and said the plant will not be allowed to open again until it meets health standards, the report said.

Villagers had been enraged by the plant's defiance of the Aug. 6 order to suspend operations, Xinhua said. Fighting between angry parents and scores of police broke out Sunday, and trucks delivering coal to the plant were stoned.

The mayor said the plant halted production only on Monday because of safety reasons. "We had to make sure the gas in the pipeline was exhausted before the plant was finally shut down," Dai said in the Xinhua report.

A man surnamed Ma who lives in Madaokou — the other of the badly affected villages, about 500 yards (meters) from the factory — said residents believed at least two villagers were taken from their homes by police Monday night. He said the Baoji city government sent officials to his village Tuesday to try to pacify residents.

"They wanted to persuade us not to cause trouble, but they didn't provide any solution to our problems," Ma said by telephone.

Associated Press journalists saw no sign of workers at the factory Tuesday, while about 50 police officers guarded the compound. Another 50 sat in police buses. The windows of the factory's reception area and security office were shattered.

A few hundred children were being tested Tuesday for lead poisoning in a third village, Luobosi.

Dr. Pascal Haefliger, a health and environment expert with the World Health Organization in Geneva, said lead stays in the body for years after exposure and continues to affect brain development and the nervous system in growing children.

"Medical treatment exists, but will not be successful in removing all the lead from the body," he said.

Xinhua said authorities have promised to relocate hundreds of families within two years, with the building of new homes about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the plant starting last week.

Deng, the farmer, cradled her daughter and said she thought those houses would still be too close.

"There is lead in the air, the air is polluted, everything is polluted," she said.


Source: Associated Press

 

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Lead poisoning stokes tensions in Chinese town
China - 19 august 2009

CHANGQING, China – Farmer Wang Zhifan jabs a stubby finger toward the sprawling smelter blamed for poisoning hundreds of local children with lead. He bares his yellowed teeth and spits hard.

"That thing is like a nuclear bomb for us," the 61-year-old says in a voice that seems to carry down the steep slope and into the corn fields that run to the smelter's fence. "There's just no saving us."

Local anger boiled over this week with a violent protest at the plant in central Shaanxi province, and tensions remain high in a dispute that demonstrates how environmental degradation caused during the charge for economic growth in China is spawning social unrest.

For decades, many Chinese firms have dumped poisons into rivers and the ground rather than disposing of them safely, counting on the acquiescence of local governments unwilling to damage their economic lifelines.

The resulting problems — from crop losses to cancer — have sometimes prompted violence, but they've also brought a rise in public awareness of environmental safety and health. Since the unrest, the government has promised to close down the Dangling Lead and Zinc Smelting Co. plant in Changqing town until it can be made safe.

That offers at least a temporary victory for the villagers, whose outrage came to a head after some 615 of 731 children in two villages near the plant tested positive earlier this month for lead poisoning. Some had lead levels 10 times that which China considers safe.

On Sunday and Monday, angry residents battled police at the smelter's gates, and stoned trucks delivering coal to the plant.

For now, the plant is closed and security is tight. Associated Press reporters who visited the area on Wednesday were tailed by local government officials, and police officers tried to break up interviews and block access to sick children and their parents.

An apology Monday from Dai Zhengshe, the mayor of Baoji city, which oversees Changqing, seems to have done little to cool villagers' anger. Dai made the promise not to reopen the smelter until it met health standards, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, but villagers said they put little faith in his words.

"You really can't trust what the government tells you," said He Xiaojun, the father of nine-year-old He Haomin, who suffers from nose bleeds and memory problems — common symptoms of lead poisoning. "We want them to move the plant," said He, whose village of Madaokou lies a stone's throw away.

Public distrust has been exacerbated over the years by unmet promises and a lack of government transparency.

Villagers living nearby were supposed to have been given new accommodation even before the smelter opened in 2006, but so far just a few dozen have relocated. Authorities promised to shut the plant on Aug. 6, but villagers — such as Wang, the farmer who likened the plant to a nuclear bomb — insist production continued for days afterward, with smoke coming from the stacks at night.

Officials say that was only to allow time for furnaces to close down without gas explosions. Plans, meanwhile, call for the relocation of all villagers living within 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) of the smelter "as soon as possible," local government spokesman Wang Minmin told The AP.

Official claims that the plant met national standards for ground and surface water, and soil and waste discharge also prompted derision and disbelief from residents, who question how then their children came to have such high lead levels in their blood.

Ma Jun, founder of the non-governmental Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing, says that's likely due to outdated standards that don't take into account the cumulative effect of lead and other heavy metals on people and the environment.

"Therefore, even if a given factory had met all the standards on emissions, there would still likely be damage to human health," Ma said.

Lead poisoning can damage the nervous and reproductive systems and cause high blood pressure, anemia and memory loss. It is especially harmful to young children, pregnant women and fetuses, with damage that is usually irreversible, according to the World Health Organization.

On Wednesday at the local Fengxiang County Hospital, about 80 children had been admitted for observation and treatment. They lay on beds, many of them on IV drips, with their parents hovering nearby.

Zha Xiaofang, 41, from Madaokou village, said her 8-year-old daughter has lead levels considered mid- to high-level poisoning. Her daughter has had abdominal pain and memory problems for some time.

"We are anxious because we don't know what will happen next and we don't have any guarantees for the future," she said.

Changqing, about 850 miles (1,380 kilometers) west of Beijing, is just one of scores of places in China where pollution and chemical contamination have sparked opposition and protests, embarrassing the ruling Communist Party and its pledges to pursue clean and sustainable development.

In Wenping township in central Hunan province, angry villagers blocked roads on July 30 after the government refused to close down a manganese processing plant. But last Thursday, the local government announced that it was shutting down the factory because it was operating illegally and had discharged lead excessively. As in Changqing, local officials offered free lead testing for all children under the age of 14 within three miles (five kilometers) of the factory.

Plans for chemical plants and garbage incinerators in urban areas have also drawn protests including marches and petitions — rare in a country where even peaceful dissenters are often punished.

Yet dubious projects continue to receive approval, due in large part to their contribution to local tax bases and employment. According to 2008 media reports, Changqing's Dongling smelter accounted for 17 percent of the county government's revenue and supported more than 2,000 households.

A government stimulus plan is also expediting projects, sometimes shortening their environmental approval times, while a tough government opponent of polluters, vice director of State Environmental Protection Agency, Pan Yue, has recently been sidelined for reasons that are unclear.

Given the lack of trust, greater transparency about major polluting projects was perhaps the only way to head-off future conflicts, said Hu Yuanqiong, a staff attorney with the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council's China Program.

"The best way to ensure social stability and the sustainability of the economy is to make information open and allow public participation in monitoring emissions and to have a mechanism between the public and the factories to talk things out and resolve disputes," Hu said.


Source: Associated Press