Authorities in east China's Jiangsu Province have suspended the operation of a battery factory and started health checks for all children living nearby after 51 children were found to have excessive lead levels in their blood.

The Shengxiang Power Source, Co., Ltd, which was just 50 meters from the Hekou Village in the Dafeng City economic zone of Dafeng City, has been ordered to move to a new place, said Sun Jie, deputy head of the publicity department of the Dafeng municipal communist party committee.

More than 140 children living in Hekou will receive checkups, and the lead pollution source has been confirmed to be the battery company, he said.

Zhou Cuiyu, a villager in Hekou, told Xinhua Tuesday that she took her one-year-old granddaughter, Gu Weiwei, to hospitals in Shanghai after the girl lost her appetite in October 2009.

On November 27, Zhou, along with 46 neighbors, have their children tested in the Shanghai Municipal Children's Hospital and the Xinhua Hospital, she said.

Test results showed that 22 of the 46 children had been poisoned as the lead levels in their blood were above 100 micrograms a liter, the recommended maximum safe level, she said.

The lead level in Gu Weiwei's blood was 178 micrograms a liter, which, the doctor said, was high enough to affect the child's physical development and faculty of memory.

"The condition of my granddaughter is not the worst. A child even has a lead level of more than 300 micrograms a liter in the blood," Zhou said.

Wang Lei, a seven-year-old boy in the Hekou Village, was diagnosed with the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, after being found to have the lead level of 188 micrograms in his blood in the Xinhua Hospital on October 8, 2009.

The battery company began operational on March 2007, and it also passed an examination from the local environmental monitoring department.

On November 22 last year, however, the monitoring department asked the company to suspend operation after finding the amount of lead in its dust emissions exceeded standards.

Two days later, the municipal government has forced the company to suspend operation by cutting its electricity supply and told it to relocate, Sun said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 6, 2010)