A Poison Spreads Amid China's Boom
Dangerously high levels of lead are discovered in many children; ground zero is Xinsi Village
An imported charm proves deadly in Minneapolis
By SHAI OSTER and JANE SPENCER
September 30, 2006; Page A1
XINSI, China -- Doctors treating a five-year-old boy after a horrific electrical accident this spring were surprised to find another, equally serious problem: dangerously elevated levels of lead in his blood.
The incident uncovered one of China's worst known cases of lead poisoning. For a decade, a factory near Xinsi, an isolated village in the mountains of China's western Gansu province, made lead ingots used in manufacturing color television tubes and cables shipped around the world.
It also poured out poisoned air containing 800 times the permissible level of lead emissions, officials say.
Shai Oster
Wang Shuhong didn't know her son, Zhou Hao, was suffering from lead poisoning until an unrelated accident brought him to the hospital.
Nearly everyone from the village who has been tested so far -- including some 250 children from three schools -- has been found with unsafe amounts of lead in their bodies. Ten children remain hospitalized and at least four are likely to have severe brain damage in the village of 1,800 people, according to Xinhua, China's official news agency.
"There's not one person in this village without lead poisoning," says Zhou Xiang, whose son was hospitalized with level of 488 micrograms per liter of blood. "My children's fingers are black and blue."
The World Health Organization says that lead blood levels of 100 micrograms per liter and above (or 10 micrograms per deciliter, using the measurement standard more common in the U.S.) are cause for concern in children. Studies show even slightly elevated lead levels can lead to permanent neurological damage and reduced IQ.
Clutching their carefully folded lab results and pointing to the numbers -- 304, 488 and even 798 -- the parents of Xinsi say they finally understand why their children have complained for so long of nausea, headaches and pains. They say their babies' teeth are growing black or not coming in at all. Parents and teachers say children are having memory and concentration problems.
The disaster shows how vulnerable China's citizens are to the environmental damage inflicted by the country's rapid industrial growth. The result is a health crisis that could have long-term consequences for a generation of children. Even in wealthier areas of China such as Shanghai and Guangdong province, officials say the deteriorating environment is a factor behind a rise in birth defects.
A lack of pollution controls has contaminated China's soil, water and air with lead, mercury and other pollutants -- and left millions of children with dangerously high levels of toxic metals in their blood. Making matters worse, much of the manufacturing that used to pollute the West has found a ready home in China, where environmental regulations are loosely enforced.
THE HEALTH EFFECTS OF LEAD
Lead is a systemic toxin that affects nearly every organ system in the body.
Health risks in children at various blood lead levels, in micrograms per liter:
0-100 -- The World Health Organization says levels of 100 or above are considered reason for concern in children. However, recent research suggests that slight IQ reductions may begin at blood levels below 50. The WHO is currently revising its guidelines to reflect the new research.
100-200 -- Continued drops in IQ, stunted growth, and hearing loss. May contribute to ADHD and learning disabilities. Blood levels of about 200 are associated with an eight-point drop in IQ.
300-500 -- Continued reductions in IQ, learning disabilities, anemia, reduced reaction times, kidney disease, infertility in men.
500 and up -- Severe brain damage and/or death.
Sources: Dr. Bruce Lanphear, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center; Dr. John Rosen, The Children's Hospital at Montefiore.About 34% of children in China have blood-lead levels that exceed the WHO limit, according to a recent report by researchers at Peking University Health Science Center in Beijing, who reviewed 10 years of data on the topic. The situation is considerably worse in factory towns like Xinsi. By comparison, fewer than 1% of children in the U.S. have levels above the WHO limit.
High lead levels are "very common in my clinic," says Yan Chonghuai, a specialist in childhood lead poisoning at Xinhua Hospital, affiliated with Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine. Dr. Yan treats cases from all over the country. On a recent day, the hospital accepted a child from Fujian province with a blood lead level of 700 and another with a level of 500 from exposure to talcum powder contaminated with lead.
In China, lead is still prized in manufacturing because it is plentiful, cheap, malleable, and resistant to corrosion. Lead compounds are regularly added to plastics and vinyl to make them more resistant to high temperatures. Because lead is heavy, it is often added to cheap metal products to make them seem more substantial.
Lead dust is sometimes added to herbal products that are sold by weight to make them heavier and increase their value. If lead is in a stable solution it may not pose a problem. But lead can be particularly dangerous in toys and jewelry because children can swallow it.
China's lead problem is drawing new attention from U.S. regulators. In the past two years, the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission has recalled roughly 20 products imported from China because of high lead content. They range from beach umbrellas to portable karaoke machines to children's animal-shaped flashlights.
"Given the nature of the global economy, the manufacturing processes abroad can have a substantial impact on the health of young children in the United States," says John F. Rosen, who runs the lead program at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York.
Earlier this year, a 4-year-old Minneapolis boy died of lead poisoning after swallowing a metal charm that came as a gift with a pair of Reebok sneakers. The charm, which was made in China, was 99% lead.
A representative of Reebok International Ltd. says the company takes "product safety very seriously" and immediately recalled 500,000 products in 25 countries following the incident. The company has since stepped up oversight of suppliers, and increased testing of products for restricted substances.
China's pollution problems are in some ways reminiscent of what was seen during the rapid industrialization of 19th-century Britain and other industrial revolutions. But China's rapid growth is taking place at a time when government officials are well aware of the dangers of toxic substances like lead.
China is in the early stages of a battle against lead that the U.S. started nearly three decades ago. During the 1960s and early 1970s, hundreds of American children were hospitalized each year with severe lead poisoning linked to exposure from lead in paint and gasoline. One in four hospitalized children died, because there were no treatments at the time. The deaths led to laws banning lead in paint, gasoline and other industrial products. The campaign against lead was part of a wave of environmental legislation passed in the 1970s aimed at reining in rampant industrial pollution.
Now, China is confronting the same "trade-off between short-term profits by industry and the long-term burden of human and environmental costs," says Bruce Lanphear, a professor of environmental health at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
After decades of ignoring the rising environmental toll of its breakneck economic growth, China's central government is now trying to stem the damage. The government has already taken some steps to curb lead exposure such as phasing out leaded gasoline in the late 1990s and passing stricter rules on workplace exposure. Yet central authorities have found their efforts stymied by local officials whose promotions are based on growth in their local economies.
Xinsi, or new temple, seems like an unlikely place for an environmental battlefield. Eight hours by bus from Xi'an, the largest nearby city and home of the famed terra-cotta warriors, Xinsi is a farming village of old mud-walled homes with traditional curved Chinese roofs and wood lattice windows.
The factory, which took lead ore and melted it to separate impurities, was opened 10 years ago by a company called Huixian Hongyu Nonferrous Smelting Co. Ltd. Huixian was owned at the time by a state conglomerate called Gansu Luo Ba Nonferrous Group.
Government officials say the factory's smelter distilled lead ore into 5,000 tons a year of lead ingots and dumped the waste in unsafe slag piles. Some of that output was eventually used in television screens or cables exported to the U.S. and South Korea, according to the parent company's Web site.
The factory lies at the base of a small creek, a stone's throw from the local primary school, and its smokestack dominates the countryside. It is far from any lead-ore deposits or convenient transportation. One local official said the factory was built in Xinsi instead of closer to bigger cities to avoid scrutiny. China's environmental regulators and activists say it's increasingly common for heavily polluting industries to move to the countryside, where supervision is weak.
There are signs that the Xinsi factory followed at least rudimentary safety procedures with its own workers, many of whom came from outside the village. The factory conducted blood tests and dismissed those whose lead levels were elevated. Zhou Fei, a 42-year-old Xinsi resident, lost his job after a failed blood test. His neighbors say he has trouble remembering dates now. Asked directly, Mr. Zhou can't recall when he worked at the factory.
Many Xinsi villagers say they had no idea that the lead dust spewed by the smelter posed a hazard to them. "We're just simple peasants," said Xu Minzheng, whose 2-year-old son has a lead level of 263 micrograms per liter of blood. His 7-year-old daughter has a lead level of 316. He pointed to the smokestack overlooking the rutted dirt path winding past corn and red chili peppers hanging to dry. "We didn't have any awareness of what lead could do. But the government officials should have known. We just don't have the means to deal with this sort of thing."
Lead causes brain damage by mimicking helpful metals found naturally in the body, such as calcium, iron and zinc, and binding with the same molecules and proteins. Calcium, for example, is essential for brain development because it facilitates the growth of nerve cells. But lead binds with the sites in the brain that were intended for calcium, disrupting brain circuits critical for learning, and sometimes impeding cell growth. The process leads to irreversible intellectual impairment. Lead exposure is especially harmful to children.
Last year, the Xinsi smelter's parent company, the Gansu Luo Ba Nonferrous Group, went private in a management buyout. The factory upgraded its emissions controls, but turned them off at night, when the factory would emit heavy smoke, to save money, villagers said. Earlier this year, government authorities told the factory to cease operating, but it continued to produce in secret, according to the villagers and Xinhua, China's official state-run news agency.
The situation might have continued unchanged if it weren't for a little boy's curiosity back in March. Five-year-old Zhou Hao was playing with a classmate near a slag heap from another factory in their hamlet. Hopping over an unfinished wall, the boy touched a big electric transformer. The massive shock blew off his shoes and knocked him unconscious.
The boy's parents rode with their badly injured son overnight in an ambulance to the nearest big city hospital, in Xi'an, for the first of many operations to save his life. His left arm was amputated, he needed skin grafts, and his badly gashed scalp swelled like a balloon.
It was after blood transfusions for one of these operations that doctors diagnosed Zhou Hao's incredibly high levels of lead. The doctors couldn't understand why farmers would have lead in their blood, until Hao's mother, Wang Shuhong, told them about the factory.
Ms. Wang said she and her husband, uneducated farmers, didn't realize the consequences of the high lead level and quickly forgot about the doctors' diagnosis. Taking turns sleeping and keeping watch over their son at the hospital and worrying about how to raise tens of thousands of yuan for his medical bills left the parents drained and exhausted.
It took another chance encounter -- this time with a worker in the Xinsi smelter they bumped into in Xi'an -- for them to learn about lead. They asked what pills they should take to get rid of the lead. He said pills wouldn't help their child.
By August, after five months of treatment, Zhou Hao's parents brought him home. Word began to spread about the young boy's lead poisoning. A few farmers began sending their children to be tested in Xi'an. But officials in the factory and government denied the lead poisoning had anything to do with them, Zhou Hao's mother and other villagers said.
Zhou Hao has lead levels that, due to blood transfusions, have swung between 262 and 557, his parents say. The factory owners "did this for their profit," says Ms. Wang. "They didn't even think about lives at all."
Officials only started taking the allegations seriously after a local newspaper in Xi'an reported Sept. 5 about all the villagers coming in for lead tests. That story was soon picked up by Xinhua, which as the official organ of the regime nationalized the story and brought it to the attention of China's central leadership.
A government investigative team from Beijing is looking into how local and provincial officials allowed the factory to keep operating for years despite its failure to meet national emissions standards.
The factory has closed and parts have been torn down, villagers say. "Our stance is very clear: If we should be found responsible for this, we will admit it and actively take responsibility. It would be impossible for us to avoid responsibility," said Liu Xiaodong, office manager at Gansu Lou Ba Nonferrous Group. The local and provincial governments declined comment pending the conclusion of an investigation.
It is highly unusual in China for a company to make reparations for environmental damage. Occasionally a polluter will be forced to pay farmers for damage to crops. But there is no developed law for establishing liability for health problems.
On a recent day, a shiny caravan of sport utility vehicles carrying a delegation of regional officials roared through the rutted mud lanes to meet with the villagers. Many of the villagers gathered in an angry crowd. The officials agreed to distribute pills to people suffering severe lead poisoning. One type of pill was a Chinese herbal remedy.
International health agencies say there's no effective treatment for lead exposure except in the most life-threatening cases, when patients can be given drugs called chelation agents that strip heavy metals out of the body. But the drugs cannot reverse brain damage that has already occurred, and they carry risks of their own because they also strip useful metals from the body, such as iron and zinc.
Wu Wenchou, a bright-eyed 15-year-old girl, is one of those who was poisoned. Ms. Wu speaks standardized Mandarin -- a clear mark of an education in a rural county where the local dialect dominates. "I used to dream of going abroad to study, maybe even America," she said quietly, barely holding back tears. "My dream has been shattered."
Once a class star, young Ms. Wu began having difficulty concentrating on her homework, and her test scores kept falling. Her once-proud mother shouted at her as her grades dropped. Her blood has lead levels of 261 -- more than double the standards for safety. She called her older sister, who is studying at a nearby medical school, and told her to come home for the lead tests, too.
"I'm afraid. We have no choice," she shrugged. "These are the facts, this is reality."
血铅事件”敲响环保警钟
今年春天，医生们在治疗一位在严重的电击事故中受伤的五岁男童时，发现了另一个同样严重的问题：男童血液里的铅含量已达到相当危险的水平。
这个发现揭开了中国最为严重的的铅中毒事件之一。在中国西部甘肃省群山环抱、与外界相对隔绝的新寺村，一家制造铅锭的工厂已在这里生产了10年。铅锭通常用于生产彩色电视显像管以及电缆，然后这些产品又被销往世界各地。
政府官员说，这家工厂排出的有毒气体含铅量是准许排铅量的800倍。
迄今为止这个村里所有接受检测的村民（包括来自三所学校的250名儿童）都被查出体内含铅量超标。据中国官方媒体新华社(Xinhua)报导，在这个1,800人的村庄中有10名儿童仍在住院接受治疗，至少有4人的大脑受到了严重损害。
村民周翔（音）说，这个村子里面每个人都受到铅中毒的侵害，我孩子的手指都是青一块紫一块的。他的儿子每升血液中的含铅量为488微克，已在医院接受治疗。
世界卫生组织(World Health Organization)称，儿童血铅含量超过每升100微克（美国中常用的衡量标准是每分升10微克）就可能带来危害。众多研究表明，血铅含量略高于这个水平都会导致永久性的神经创伤和智商下降。
新寺村的家长们紧紧握着仔细折好的实验室检测结果，并指着304、488甚至是798这样的数字说，他们终于明白了孩子们为什么总说感到恶心、头疼和其它部位疼痛。他们说，孩子们的牙齿都是黑的，有的根本不长牙齿。家长和老师都反映孩子们有记忆力和注意力不好的问题。
这场灾难体现了在面对中国飞速经济发展所带来的环境损害时中国民众是多么的脆弱。这些损害最终将引发影响一代人的健康危机。政府官员表示，即使在上海以及广东省等中国相对富裕的城市和地区，环境不断恶化是导致畸形儿出生率上升的元凶之一。
污染控制措施的不足已使中国的土壤、水源以及空气受到了铅、汞及其他污染物的侵害，这种现状使数百万儿童血液中有毒金属的含量达到了极其危险的水平。更糟糕的是，曾经污染西方国家的众多制造业在中国找到了新的栖身之地，因为在这里环境法规的执行力度较松。
北京大学医学部(Peking University Health Science Center in Beijing)研究人员回顾了过去10年的数据在最近的一份报告中写道，约34%的中国儿童血铅含量超过WHO规定的最高限。新寺村等设有工厂的城镇情况更糟。而在美国，血铅含量超过WHO限制水平的儿童不足1%。
上海交通大学医学院(Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine)附属新华医院(Xinhua Hospital)的儿童铅中毒专家颜崇怀说，含铅量高“在我的诊室内非常常见”。颜崇怀为来自全国各地的患者进行治疗。该院最近接收了来自福建省的两名儿童患者，由于接触被铅污染的滑石粉，两名儿童的血铅含量分别为700及500。
在中国，铅在制造业中仍然受到“重用”，因为它储备充足、价格低廉、可锻性强而且不容易被腐蚀。铅化合物通常被添加至塑料及乙烯基中以增强它们的抗高温性能。由于铅很重，它通常还被添加至价格低廉的金属制品中，以使后者显得更加坚实。
铅粉还会被添加至那些按重量出售的草本产品中，以增加它们的重量提高价值。如果铅处在稳定的溶液中，它可能不会产生危害。但是玩具及珠宝中所含的铅则特别危险，因为儿童可能吞下这些东西。
中国的铅问题重新引起了美国监管当局的关注。两年来，美国消费品安全委员会(Consumer Products Safety Commission)已经召回了大约20种含铅量过高的中国进口产品，其中包括海滨遮阳伞、便携式卡拉OK设备及做成动物形状的手电筒玩具等多种商品。
纽约Montefiore儿童医院(Children's Hospital at Montefiore)负责铅项目的约翰?罗森(John F. Rosen)说，鉴于经济全球化的特点，海外的制造过程可能对美国儿童的健康产生重大影响。
今年早些时候，明尼阿波利斯的一名4岁男孩吞下了作为锐步(Reebok)运动鞋赠品的金属饰物后，最终因铅中毒而死亡。这块金属赠品就产自中国，含铅量99%。
锐步(Reebok International Ltd.)的一位代表称，公司非常重视产品安全问题，出了这次事件后，公司立即在25个国家召回了50万件产品。此后，公司加强了对供应商的监督，增加了对产品中有害物质的检测。
中国的污染问题不禁让人想起十九世纪英国以及其他很多国家工业革命时期的情形。不过，在中国经济飞速发展的同时，政府官员已经深切地认识到包括铅在内的有毒物质的危害。
中国防范铅中毒的斗争尚处早期阶段，而美国早在30年前便开始展开此类行动。六、七十年代，每年都有数百名美国儿童因严重的铅中毒入院治疗，主要与接触含铅涂料和汽油有关。由于当时医疗水平低下，这些患者中每4人就有1人死亡。诸多的死亡案例促使监管部门加强了立法，禁止在涂料、汽油以及其他很多工业产品中添加铅。七十年代，美国通过了一系列环境法案防止工业污染的蔓延，有关铅污染的防范便是其中之一。
辛辛那提儿童医院医疗中心(Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center)教授布鲁斯?拉菲尔(Bruce Lanphear)表示，如今，中国也开始面临工业短期利润与人类和环境成本的长期负担之间的权衡。
在几十年的经济高速增长过程中，中国政府一度忽略了经济发展对环境造成的危害，不过眼下政府开始努力治理这一问题。中国政府已经采取了一系列措施限制铅污染，例如在九十年代末淘汰了含铅汽油，通过了更严格的有关工作环境的法令。不过，中央政府也发现他们的努力经常在地方政府受阻，因为本地经济增长成为衡量地方官员政绩及升迁的重要指标。
新寺村就很难成为治理环境的战场。从这里乘车到附近最大的城市西安市大约需要8个小时，这里仍然以农耕为主，居民住的还是带有木框窗户的尖顶泥土房屋。
10年前，徽县有色金属冶炼有限责任公司(Huixian Hongyu Nonferrous Smelting Co. Ltd.)在这里开设了一家铅矿石提纯加工的工厂，该公司当时由政府所有的甘肃洛坝有色金属集团公司(Gansu Luo Ba Nonferrous Group)所有。
政府官员表示，该工厂每年生产铅锭5,000吨，排出了大量存在污染的工业废渣。据其母公司的网站显示，这些产品中有一部分被用在了出口美国和韩国的电视机屏幕或电缆上。
这家工厂坐落在一条小河边，与当地的小学近在咫尺。它的大烟囱成了这个村庄最醒目的标志。这里离任何铅矿都不近，也没有方便的交通。一位本地官员表示，工厂之所以建在新寺村而不是大城市是因为在这里可以躲避监管审查。中国环境监管部门及一些环保主义者表示，重污染工业向农村转移的现象越来越普遍，那里的监管相对薄弱一些。
有迹象显示该工厂针对自己的工人至少实施了一些最基本的安全检查，这里的很多工人来自外村。该公司经常要求工人验血，辞掉那些血液铅含量过高的人。42岁的新寺村居民周飞（音）就因为验血结果不合格而失去了这份工作。他的邻居说，他现在已经记不得日期了。当记者直接询问周飞时，他甚至想不起来什么时候在这家工厂工作过。
新寺村的很多居民说，他们并不知道这家工厂排放的铅粉尘会有这么严重的危害。“我们只是农民，”村民徐民正说，他两岁的儿子的血铅含量达到了每升263微克，7岁女儿的铅含量达到316微克。他指着工厂的大烟囱，看着这些烟尘随风掠过玉米地和晾晒的红辣椒说，“我们并不了解铅的危害，但是政府官员应该知道。我们没有任何办法处理这种问题。”
Shai Oster / Jane Spencer
