Posted on 08/31/2009 4:02:24 PM PDT by nickcarraway
More than 200 children living beside an industrial park in southwest China have been found to have excessive lead in their blood, state media said on Monday, in the third such case reported in the last month.
Health authorities tested around 1,000 children in a neighborhood of the city of Kunming, the official China Daily said.
"Their levels are all higher than 100 micrograms of lead in each liter of blood but lower than 200 micrograms per liter," the newspaper quoted a medical doctor, Wu Ling, as saying.
Lead poisoning can build up slowly and occurs from repeated exposure to small amounts of lead which can harm a child's mental development. Health problems get more severe as the level of lead in the blood gets higher.
Parents are blaming the poisoning on a nearby industrial park, the report added, though the local environmental protection bureau denies there is a direct link with industrial pollutants.
The environmental bureau said the case has been caused by factors such as exhaust emissions.
"There are thousands of children in Dongchuan district and other areas, so I wonder why only the kids around the industrial park have been found to have excessive lead in their blood," a local mother was cited as saying.
Earlier this month, more than 800 children living near a metal smelter in northwest Shaanxi province were found to have dangerous amounts of lead in their blood, and more than 150 were sent to hospital.
The same problem also dogs heavy metals bases in Hunan, Henan, Yunnan and Guangdong provinces.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Yah, whatever. They don’t care. They have millions of kids. So a few might die of lead poisoning, meh! They’ll make more. Its all for the glory of the state, you see.
Ping
Does anyone know the hard science on lead poisoning? Why aren't all our ancestors brain damaged due to lead exposure as it was used so extensively in plumbing and most homes still have a lead water service?
Sorry not EPA, but CDC.
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