Lead Poisonings Prompt Nationwide Shut Down Of Battery Factories

We have been reading reports since at least the beginning of this year that battery factories have been closed down because they are causing lead poisoning in children (this one via BBC). Now it appears the situation has deteriorated to the point where virtually the entire industry is being shut down. Bloomberg quotes Xu Hong, head of the lead-acid battery branch at the China Electrical Equipment Industry Association, as saying:

Regardless of the plants’ conditions, they’ve all been shut down, and there is no timetable now to resume operations.

Zhejiang and Guangdong are the two biggest battery-producing provinces, accounting for more than a third of the country’s output. There have been reports of lead poisoning incidents in both places. Plants in Sichuan and Henan, too, have suspended production, Bloomberg says. The BBC adds that more than 100 people around the country have been affected recently by lead and cadmium poisoning. These are likely to be both children living nearby and factory workers. In 2009 and 2010, thousands of children in several provinces who lived near metal smelters or battery factories were affected by lead poisoning.

Industrial pollution from heavy metals and environmental degradation have become highly sensitive social issues. In Inner Mongolia, after a herdsman was killed trying to stop coal mining trucks crossing traditional nomadic grazing pasture and another Mongolian died at a mine protest, it has turned into a full-scale political and security crisis, as the state media blackout testifies.

As with food safety, good intentions at national and increasingly regional level have not turned into effect policy implementation at local level. As with the attempted clean-up of the coal and steel industries before, a clamp-down on illegal lead smelters and hundreds of small, unauthorized electroplating and battery workshops has been underway since mid-month. The China Business News says that the goal is to reduce the number of battery makers to about 300 from the current 1,700.

In mid-May, the Ministry of Environmental Protection warned that “criminal penalties will be imposed upon the heads of the responsible businesses, and local chief officials will also be held accountable for pollution incidents.” The BBC says some 74 people have been detained this year in connection with lead poisonings. We are sure many of these are likely to be officials from local government, local environmental protection and health bureaus now being investigated for lax supervision. We are also sure they won’t be the last.

Another Lead Poisoning Scandal

Another case of lead poisoning of children is being put under state media’s spotlight. The Huaqiang Battery Plant in Longyan in Fujian has been closed down after 121 local children of 287 tested were found to be have excessive levels of lead in their blood, People’s Daily reports.

This comes barely a month after hundreds of children living near smelting plants in Shaanxi and Hunan were found to be suffering from lead poisoning, and is only the latest of a series of such cases that have been reported this year, cases that previously might have been kept out of the public spotlight. Central authorities now want to use to show they are being responsive to the popular outrage about the country’s environmental degradation, and snuff out any chance of environmentalism becoming the sort of single-issue around which challengers to the Party’s grip on power could coalesce.

Third Toxic Smelter Closed

The smelter scandal is starting to echo last year’s melamine-tainted infant formula in that it is spreading out of control. A third plant within a month is being closed because children living near it are falling ill. In this case it is a manganese smelter in Wenping in Hunan. More than 1,300 local children are suffering from lead poisoning. Two executives from the plant have been detained, Xinhua reports, though its general manager seems to have fled.

State media say the plant has been running for more than three months without environmental approvals. A kindergarten, primary school and middle school are within 500 metres of the smelter. As with the Dongling smelter in Shaanxi, parents in Wenping have been staging violent protests, China Daily reports, blocking roads and upending a police car. Meanwhile South China Morning Post reports that another toxic smelter in Hunan has also been closed for causing lead poisoning.