Two hundred children are suffering from lead poisoning in southwest China, the nation’s third case of mass sickening in the past month, an official newspaper said yesterday.
Parents in Tongdu, a township in Yunnan Province’s capital of Kunming, blamed the poisoning on a nearby industrial park, while local environmental officials attributed it to vehicle exhaust, the China Daily reported.
60 PERCENT
The Yunnan official overseeing the province’s lead prevention office said that up to 60 percent of children under 14 are suffering from lead poisoning in areas of Yunnan with high mining activity — including Dongchuan, where the industrial park is located.
The Child Lead Prevention and Cure Office in Yunnan conducted the survey of random children last year, director Liu Dakun said.
He declined to take further questions or say how excessive the levels were. He did not comment on this case.
An official with the Yunnan provincial environmental agency, however, said he was unclear of the situation, while calls to the Kunming environmental bureau yesterday rang unanswered.
Earlier last month, more than 1,300 children in central Hunan Province and at least 615 children in northern Shaanxi Province tested positive for lead poisoning, which can damage the nervous and reproductive systems and cause high blood pressure and memory loss.
Those cases have been linked to metal processing plants near their homes and schools. Both plants have been shut down.
ANGER
Anger is growing in China over public safety scandals in which children have been the main victims. The Communist party is worried that mass protests will threaten the country’s social stability and challenge its grip on power.
In the latest lead poisoning case, environmental officials in Tongdu said it was not linked to industrial pollution but to vehicle exhaust, the China Daily said. But the newspaper quoted parents as saying only children living near the industrial park were sickened.
Mining is one of the biggest industries in Yunnan, a mountainous region that is home to many of China’s ethnic minorities and has large deposits of zinc, lead, tin and other metals, according to the provincial government’s Web site.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese