Lead smelters shut for investigation

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-25 09:54

Chinese provinces have begun shutting down lead smelters for environmental checks after more than 2,000 children tested positive for high levels of lead in two separate cases this month.

At least three lead smelters in Central China's Henan province and two in Shaanxi province, with a combined capacity of about 6 percent of China's annual production, were ordered to temporarily halt operations in recent days, officials said.

Henan, the top refined-lead producing province in the country, has shut 240,000 tons of annual lead-smelting capacity after the poisoning scandal broke, smelter officials said Monday.

"Three plants were shut on Sunday, with a monthly output of 15,000 to 20,000 tons," said a senior executive at a large lead smelter in Henan.

A sales manager at a medium-sized lead smelter in Henan said the province had asked lead smelters to shut capacity that did not meet national environmental standards.

"About a third of the province's lead smelting capacity could eventually be closed," he said.

Henan has more than 1 million tons of lead smelting capacity and less than half have reached national standards, the manager estimated.

"There are increasing calls for closure," said a trade manager at a major lead smelter in Henan.

China is the world's top lead producer.

The closures came after parents protested at a lead and zinc smelter operated by Dongling Group in Changqing, Shaanxi province, and at a manganese smelter in Hunan this month.

More than 1,350 children in Wenping of Hunan suffered excessive lead in their blood due to pollution from the Wugang Manganese Smelting Plant. And in Fengxiang of Shaanxi, a total of 851 children have tested positive for high levels of lead.

The ministries of environmental protection and health have sent a team to Hunan to probe the poisoning.

Interviews conducted this weekend showed lead poisoning is endemic among villages near Chinese smelters.

In Shaanxi's Fengxian, where smoke billows from a Dongling Group zinc smelter, two wan and listless toddlers tested positive for high levels of lead in their blood earlier this year. Villagers requested but did not get testing for 30 other children.

"These problems are really common, actually. It's just that the Dongling case in Changqing got some attention," said a villager surnamed Tu. Older villagers developed circulatory problems and some workers at the plant got too sick to work.

"This environmental pollution is not unique to Fengxian. It's all over," Tu said.

Lead poisoning due to air and water pollution from poorly regulated smelters and mines haunts the valleys of the ore-rich Qinling range, in a poor and remote part of China.

The problem dogs heavy metals bases in Hunan, Henan, Yunnan and Guangdong provinces. Closing polluting plants has pushed the industry to poorer areas where any investment is welcome.

The shift to poorer regions echoes the migration of the lead smelting industry to China over the last decade, as stricter environmental laws forced smelters in richer countries to close.

China's output of refined lead rose nearly 20 percent in 2008 to 3.2 million tons. Output feeds the Chinese battery industry, the world's largest, which then exports worldwide.

The casualties of China's heavy metals industry only get attention when officials respond to cases too large to ignore.

In late 2005, two of China's largest zinc smelters shut temporarily after cadmium contaminated the Pearl River Delta and the Xiangjiang River, sources of drinking water for millions in Hunan and Guangdong provinces. Cadmium hurts kidney and lung function.

Elevated cadmium levels also showed up in tests of children near the Dongling Group's lead and zinc smelter in Changqing.

Children are most vulnerable to lead poisoning because they are still developing, but smelter workers also fall sick because they absorb it through their skin. Ingestion of large amounts of lead may result in anemia, muscle weakness and brain damage.

"My dad couldn't stand it any more, so he quit working. It got so he could only work 20 days at a time, then he would have to stop," said a young woman surnamed Zhang. "Dad's stomach would always hurt. When it's bad, he doesn't want to eat and has no energy."

Zhang's husband now works at a different smelter after her family's employer, Shaanxi Nonferrous Metals Holding, halted work at its 50,000-ton Wenjiangsi lead smelter earlier this month.

China Daily-Reuters