Some 100 children from Wugang, a county level city in central China's Hunan Province, were found to have excessive levels of lead in their blood caused by heavy pollution from a local manganese metallurgical plant, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported on Wednesday.

This is the second latest severe lead poisoning case ever discovered in China after 851 other children from Fengxiang county, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, were also confirmed lead-poisoned by a local metallurgical polluter.

The lead poisoning scandals in both provinces shed light on the dilemma facing many parts of China where industrial development poses increasingly bigger threats to the environment and people's health, particularly children's.

The report says the manganese factory in Wenping town of Wugang, believed to have caused the heavy lead poisoning, was set up by a local villager surnamed Liu and other investors some three years ago.

The report added that the villager-boss had not confessed any possible harmful effects from his factory's heavy pollution until one resident was told by a doctor in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan, that lead poisoning from the nearby metallurgical plant contributed to his child's hair loss.

Amid widespread fears of lead poisoning, local villagers took their children to hospitals for blood tests, through which they found their children have all got excessive levels of lead in their blood. Some adults in the village where the plant locates were also found to have lead poisoning.

These triggered even greater anger from among the local residents and children's parents. However, their legal complaints and appeals had all proved to be in vain by July 30, when all the villagers from Hengjiang village of Wugang, had to resort to a big protest by blocking their village section of a local major highway, pressing the local city government to address the serious problem.

The head of the Wugang government was rushed to the scene and arranged for 86 children from Hengjiang to be tested free for lead poisoning at the Changsha Occupational Diseases Center, although the test results are yet to be made public.

Meanwhile, the Wugang government also issued a notice, persuading villagers who lived within a 2.5-kilometer radius of the manganese plant to receive free blood tests at Wugang People's Hospital or Wugang Children Health Center as long as they did not discuss the scandal.

The report said the residents however preferred to take their children to hospitals in nearby Xinning County because they did not trust test results issued by government-appointed hospitals.

In a related development on August 15, the Wugang government had to order all metallurgical plants to suspend their activities for environmental inspections. Only plants with no excessive lead emissions that met other environmental standards would be allowed to legally resume production.

(CRIENGLISH.com August 20, 2009)