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Polluting plant shut down
By Huang Zhiling (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-13 09:42
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LONGCHANG, Sichuan - A polluting plant in this small county bordering Sichuan province and Chongqing municipality has been ordered to stop operation in the wake of a lead poisoning scandal, which has sickened 49 people.
Zhongyi Alloy Co Ltd in Zhoujiasi village in Longchang county, Sichuan province, was closed on Feb 26 after a villager found to have an excessive amount of lead in his blood reported to the county environmental protection bureau that he suspected the company was responsible, said deputy county magistrate Kang Houlin in an interview with China Daily.
Zhang Jiayou, who lives in the village, had a physical check-up in the hospital attached to the Luzhou Medical College in Luzhou in southern Sichuan on Feb 23.
"To my great surprise, it showed an abnormally high amount of lead in my blood. As Zhongyi Alloy Co Ltd which processed lead and other metals had operated in my village for about five years and polluted rivers, I linked my disease with the company," said Zhang, who had worked as a migrant worker in Beijing.
Two days later, Zhang called a hotline of the county environmental protection bureau, which in turn reported the case to the county government.
The next day, the government ordered the company to stop operation and organized a physical check-up for 1,756 people in four villages within a distance of 800 meters of the company.
"By Friday afternoon, 49 people had been found to have an abnormal amount of lead in their blood. Forty-seven are children and two are adults," Su Lin, chief of the emergency response office of the Sichuan provincial department of health, told China Daily.
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The case of Longchang is the latest in a string of lead poisoning scandals nationwide.
Last December, 25 children in Qingyuan, Guangdong province, were confirmed to have excessive levels of lead in their blood due to pollution from a nearby storage battery company in the Qingyuan Economic Development Zone.
Last August, at least 51 children in Dafeng, Jiangsu province, were found to have excessive levels of lead in their blood. Dafeng Shengxiang Power Supply Co Ltd, a lead-acid battery manufacturer, was held responsible for the poisoning.
The string of scandals has come amid public outcry over pervasive heavy metal pollution in a country where the pursuit of GDP growth is blamed for environmental deterioration and mounting health problems.
An official surnamed Zhang from Dafeng municipal environmental protection bureau said that in the local government's bid to attract investment, they did not pay enough attention to environmental rules.
Local media earlier quoted an executive from Shengxiang as saying that the company did advise local authorities that when choosing the factory site, residents should be kept a safe distance of 1,500 to 2,000 meters away. But the officials told them not to worry about that.
