China's Pollution: The Birth Defect Angle

The Atlantic ^ | 1/29/13 | Fallon

[mgist]

Last week I mentioned the effects that China's latest pollution emergency was having on Chinese citizens and foreigners living there. Here's a picture posted on Twitter just now from a friend in Beijing, showing the view from the 30th floor out toward our former neighborhood. Some related notes that have come in, about a problem increasingly recognized inside China as a national emergency. From a reader in the United States: I work in international adoption. One of the biggest changes in the last ten years is the precipitous drop in the number of infants with no identified medical needs available for adoption from China. This is a hugely contentious topic within the adoption community, and I'll spare you most of it. However, along with the disappearance of children with no identified medical needs, we have seen a huge increase in the number of children with identified medical needs. Every month, I place children (from 9 months to 14 years) who have cleft lip and/or cleft palate; missing fingers, hands, toes, parts of arms or legs; malformed internal organs; genetic disorders; etc. While any country with a population as large as China's will have some number of children born with birth defects, there are persistent rumors that the horrendous pollution in China has led to a huge increase such births in China....

[Venturer]

That pollution is from those plants that used to be in America and were relatively cean, but the EPA ran them over there where they can be dirty.

Running more out of business every day.

Anyone want to know why we don’t have jobs in America?

[BitWielder1]

Are they keeping the healthy children in the country, to grow up as slave labor or worse, and put only the sick ones up for adoption to well-meaning Americans?
The total number of sick kids over the last few decades might tell you?

[mgist]

I got the impression that nobody wants to adopt the sick children. We have always been a nation of small business. Those small businesses are being closed, and that is what is affecting unemployment.

[Syndication]

Nice to see the Libs are finally focusing on the Chi-comms
http://politicalsyn.blogspot.com/