Thousands of China’s Children Suffering With Lead Poisoning From Factory Exposure
September 8, 2011 Kyriaki (Sandy) Venetis 
Photo courtesy of CartoonStock.com.
China has seen amazing economic growth in the last decade, but many of the country’s most vulnerable workers and their children are paying the price for that prosperity.
“Hundreds of thousands of children in China are suffering permanent mental and physical disabilities as a result of lead poisoning. Many of them live in poor, polluted villages next to and surrounded by lead smelters and battery factories,” said the new report – My Children Have Been Poisoned – from the Human Rights Watch.
“Often, their parents work in these factories bringing more lead into their homes on their clothes, boots, and hands,” said the report.
Joe Amon, health and human rights director at Human Rights Watch said, “We went to four provinces (Henan, Hunan, Shaanxi, and Yunnan), and in those provinces, we went to largely rural areas, having industrial factories and full of families that were just sick.
“Sometimes they didn’t even know why they were sick. They were just struggling. They just weren’t feeling well. They weren’t gaining any weight. The children were developmentally delayed, and the young weren’t walking and talking.”
