Plant shut after lead tests on children
Print Edition
A CHEMICAL plant in central China’s Hunan Province has been shut down over suspicions it caused lead poisoning in more than 300 local children.
Blood tests on the children in Hengdong County’s Dapu Township found excessive levels of lead, the county government said yesterday. Lead densities in their blood all exceeded the national standard of 100 micrograms per liter for children, with some reaching as high as 322 micrograms per liter, Xinhua news agency reported.
On Saturday, the local authority set up an investigation team and shut the Meilun Chemical Materials plant, Xinhua said. Authorities also asked for power to be cut to the plant and for its production equipment to be dismantled.
Another team is to check other enterprises in the township and whether there are any other children affected.
Local residents have reported the chemical company for discharging untreated dust and waste water, both of which could have caused the high readings in the Dapu children.
Excessive amounts of lead in the blood harm the nervous and reproductive systems and can cause high blood pressure and anemia. In severe cases, it can lead to a coma, convulsions and death.
Most of the Dapu children detected with excessive lead densities have been suffering from stomachaches and weakness, according to the Beijing Times, which said that the growth and development of some of them had been falling behind that of their peers.
One boy, Nie Yilong, was 6.8 centimeters shorter and 10 kilograms lighter than national medical standards, the newspaper said. He also suffered from a poor memory and his reactions were slow.
The Meilun plant, which produces electrolytic zinc and other chemicals, is very close to a residential area where thousands of people live, the Beijing Times said. It said tests showed the closer the children were to the plant, the higher their lead densities.
However, officials with Hengdong County’s environmental protection administration said earlier that Meilun met official environmental requirements.
Su Genlin, Dapu Township’s head, said the cause of the lead poisoning had not been established, going on to claim that excessive lead densities in the blood could have come from children chewing pencils. But so-called “lead” pencils don’t contain lead.
The newspaper sent a sample of dust from the balcony of a house in the township to a laboratory and found that the lead density was 7,780 milligrams per kilogram, almost 21 times more than the national safety standard for residential areas, 350 milligrams per kilogram.
The laboratory also found excessive amounts of cadmium, zinc, mercury and other heavy metals in the sample, the newspaper reported.
Tests were also carried out on mud from a ditch where the plant discharged sewage, and found that the proportion of heavy metals in the mud was the same as those in the dust sample, indicating that the heavy metal pollution came from the plant, the paper said.
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