Chinese provinces have begun shutting lead smelters for environmental checks, after hundreds of children tested for high levels of lead in two separate cases this month.At least three lead smelters in 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.
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.
China's pollution and lax product safety standards have long been a source of tension and unrest, particularly when residents of pollution hotspots -- dubbed "cancer villages" because of high disease rates -- feel they are being ignored.
Lead poisoning is endemic among villages near Chinese smelters, interviews conducted this weekend showed.
In Shaanxi's Fengxian, where smoke billows from a Dongling Group zinc smelter, two wan and listless toddlers tested with high levels of lead in their blood earlier this year. Villagers requested but did not get testing for 30 other children.
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 3.26 million metric tons. Output feeds the Chinese battery industry, the world's largest, which then exports worldwide.
SOURCE : REUTERS
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