Twenty-four children, aged between nine months and 16 years old, have been hospitalized for lead poisoning caused by an illegal battery factory in their east China village, state media said yesterday, marking the latest in a string of battery-related poisonings in recent years.
Xinhua news agency said local authorities had shut down Borui Battery Co Ltd and another battery factory it did not name in Huaining County, Anhui Province, after tests found that at least 200 local children had elevated lead levels, with 24 of them requiring hospitalization.
Borui had failed to pass necessary environmental checks and had been operating illegally.
Xinhua said both factories lie just across the street from homes, despite regulations that say battery plants cannot be within a 500m radius of residential communities. It did not say when the factories started operating or what kind of batteries the factories produced.
The report did not pinpoint how the children were exposed, but battery factories can pollute the air and soil with their emissions.
China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of lead, a key component in the lead-acid batteries needed for the growing number of cars and electric bikes in the country.
“My son is now very cranky and restless,” Xinhua quoted the father of a five-year-old boy who was found to have 330.9mg of lead per liter of blood as saying. “He yells a lot.”
Just 100mg per liter is enough to impair brain development in children.
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