Lead poisoning again is on the front page of the New York Times yet no one
understands this fact: there is no safe level in children. Why would anyone
allow any woman to go through pregnancy without at least some of my detox
program, power drink, oral chelation like Beyond Chelation-Improved or
Zeolite? Why not all three, as no one approach can deal with all the toxins we
find in every newborn today and it all comes FROM THE MOM.
Please understand we all have too much lead and during pregnancy the body
transfers the mother's lead and other toxins to the baby and also
concentrates it SIX fold.
How can we continue to ignore this epidemic when we have safe affordable
answers? Maybe you can at least get 8 gm of BIOEN'R-G'Y C into pregnant
women daily, as that too is an oral chelator. But let's do something about the
TEN AMERICANS report by www.ewg.org that proves every child born is loaded
with carcinogens, neurotoxins and endocrine disruptors.
The parents save $3000 or so by not going on appropriate nutritional
products for detox during the entire pregnancy, but best results will be when
starting 1 year before the pregnancy and treat the dad too! Or they pay
$250,000- 500,000 in extraordinary health care costs to deal with what could
have been prevented with a little rational family planning.
"No blood lead level has been found to be safe for a child," Dr. Mary Jean
Brown, chief of the lead poisoning prevention branch of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview last week. No blood lead
level has been found to be safe for a child," Dr. Mary Jean Brown, chief
of the lead poisoning prevention branch of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, said in an interview last week"
Garry F. Gordon MD,DO,MD(H)
President, Gordon Research Institute
www.gordonresearch.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/world/asia/15lead.html
June 15, 2011
Lead Poisoning in China: The Hidden Scourge
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
MENGXI VILLAGE, China — On a chilly evening early last month, a mob of
more than 200 people gathered in this tiny eastern China village at the
entrance to the Zhejiang Haijiu Battery Factory, a maker of lead-acid batteries
for motorcycles and electric bikes. They shouldered through an outer brick
wall, swept into the factory office and, in an outpouring of pure fury,
smashed the cabinets, desks and computers inside.
News had spread that workers and villagers had been poisoned by lead
emissions from the factory, which had operated for six years despite flagrant
environmental violations. But the truth was even worse: 233 adults and 99
children were ultimately found to have concentrations of lead in their blood,
up to seven times the level deemed safe by the Chinese government.
One of them was 3-year-old Han Tiantian, who lived just across the road
from the plant. Her father, Han Zongyuan, a factory worker, said he learned
in March that she had absorbed enough lead to irreversibly diminish her
intellectual capacity and harm her nervous system.
"At the moment I heard the doctor say that, my heart was shattered," Mr.
Han said in an interview last week. "We wanted this child to have
everything. That's why we worked this hard. That's why we poisoned ourselves at this
factory. Now it turns out the child is poisoned too. I have no words to
describe how I feel."
Such scenes of heartbreak and anger have been repeated across China in
recent months with the discovery of case after case of mass lead poisoning —
together with instances in which local governments tried to cover them up.
In the past two and a half years, thousands of workers, villagers and
children in at least 9 of mainland China's 31 province-level regions have been
found to be suffering from toxic levels of lead exposure, mostly caused by
pollution from battery factories and metal smelters. The cases underscore a
pattern of government neglect seen in industry after industry as China
strives for headlong growth with only embryonic safeguards.
Chasing the political dividends of economic development, local officials
regularly overlook environmental contamination, worker safety and dangers to
public health until forced to confront them by episodes like the Haijiu
factory riot.
A report by Human Rights Watch released Wednesday states that some local
officials have reacted to mass poisonings by arbitrarily limiting lead
testing, withholding and possibly manipulating test results, denying proper
treatment to children and adults and trying to silence parents and activists.
"What we are trying to underscore is how little has been done to address
the massive impact of lead pollution in China," Joe Amon, the organization'
s health and human rights director, said in an interview. "It really has
affected a whole generation of kids."
In more developed nations, where lead pollution has been tightly regulated
for decades, a pattern of lead poisoning like China's would most likely be
deemed a public-health emergency.
High levels can damage the brain, kidney, liver, nerves and stomach and,
in extreme cases, cause death. Children are particularly susceptible because
they absorb lead more easily than adults.
"No blood lead level has been found to be safe for a child," Dr. Mary
Jean Brown, chief of the lead poisoning prevention branch of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview last week.
Here, Chinese leaders have acknowledged that lead contamination is a grave
issue and have raised the priority of reducing heavy-metal pollution in
the government's latest five-year plan, presented in March. But despite
efforts to step up enforcement, including suspending production last month at a
number of battery factories, the government's response remains faltering.
At a meeting last month of China's State Council, after yet another
disclosure of mass poisoning, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao scolded Environmental
Minister Zhou Shengxian for the lack of progress, according to an individual
with high-level government ties who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The government has not ordered a nationwide survey of children's blood
lead levels, so the number of children who are at risk is purely a matter of
guesswork. Mass poisonings like that at the Haijiu factory typically come to
light only after suspicious parents seek hospital tests, then alert
neighbors or co-workers to the alarming results.
The few published studies point to a huge problem. One 2001 research paper
called lead poisoning one of the most common pediatric health problems in
China. A 2006 review of existing data suggested that one-third of Chinese
children suffer from elevated blood lead levels.
The state Health Ministry said in 2006 that a nationwide test for children
was unnecessary because their blood lead levels had been falling. But
since then, a new source of lead pollution — factories that produce lead-acid
batteries for electric bikes, motorcycles and cars — has emerged with a
vengeance.
The industry has grown by 20 percent a year for the past five or six
years, and is expected to expand further, according to Wang Jingzhong, vice
director of the China Battery Industry Association. China now has some 2,000
factories and 1,000 battery-recycling plants. For regulators, Mr. Wang said, "
It is a chaotic situation."
Enforcement is spotty at best. Shen Yulin, the environmental protection
director for Deqing County, where the Haijiu factory is located, said 65
inspectors were responsible for a region of nearly 400 square miles, with more
than 2,000 factories.
Haijiu breezed through six years of inspections, even though many workers
say they were repeatedly hospitalized for lead poisoning. Only after last
month's protest did authorities criticize the plant for a host of violations
and order the plant closed and production lines razed.
At a press conference this month, Li Ganjie, the vice minister for
environmental protection, said that every suspected case of lead poisoning is
fully investigated and that "the people involved, whether they are children or
adults, are well-tested and treated."
Interviews over the past month with 20 families in Henan and Zhejiang
Provinces indicate otherwise. Near Jiyuan City, in Henan Province, nearly 1,000
children from 10 villages were found to have elevated blood lead levels in
2009. Government officials ordered the children treated, families
relocated and the smelters cleaned up.
But a recent visitor found children still playing in the streets of one
village literally in the shadow of a privately-owned lead smelter that
nightly belches plumes of dark smoke. In interviews, their parents and
grandparents said that local hospitals now refuse to administer new blood lead level
tests, even if the families pay out of their own pockets.
"The children are not healthy. We don't know how sick they are, and we can
't find out," said one 66-year-old villager whose two grandsons were
found to have blood lead levels two and three times above the norm when tested
in 2009.
Local officials appeared determined to suppress such complaints. Within a
few hours of a visitor's arrival this month, Jiyuan City's propaganda
chief appeared with three carloads of plainclothes officers, bringing all
reporting and interviewing to a screeching halt.
That would not surprise Ye Cai'e, who lives near the Suji battery factory
in Zhejiang Province, 200 miles southeast of Mengxi. After tests showed 53
children and 120 adults suffered from excessive lead levels, Ms. Ye said
that local officials said: "Whoever makes noise will not receive compensation
or medical treatment."
Migrant workers and their families were also left out of the program,
villagers said. Yang Fufen, 40, said her 2-year-old son tested at more than
three times the allowable blood lead level in March, but has received no
medical attention, apparently because her legal residence is elsewhere.
At the Haijiu Battery Factory, which exports to the United States,
regulation of lead emissions was not so much lax as nonexistent.
The factory's opening in 2005 brought more than 1,000 jobs. Local
authorities allowed the plant to expand to within a rice paddy of the village. They
also ignored the breakdown of ventilation equipment and the building of a
hostel for workers and their spouses and children on factory grounds.
Workers say managers simply slowed down production lines when inspectors
came. One worker said he had watched a supervisor cover a device that tests
for lead emissions in the air with his cap, then whisk the inspectors away
for tea.
It did not take long for problems to surface. Workers said they repeatedly
had tested above the occupational limit for blood lead levels and were
sent to the local hospital, where drugs were injected intravenously to reduce
the level and toxicity of lead in their bodies.
Zhou Zuyin, 42, said he was hospitalized for treatment of lead poisoning
every year for four years, returning each time to his job of smoothing the
edges of lead sheets. Even after a test revealed liver damage, he said, "The
factory said it was normal."
He said his biggest worry now is his 13-year-old son's health. A blood
test showed the boy had nearly double what China considers a safe lead level. "
He is getting more and more scared," Mr. Zhou said. "I don't know what to
say to him. I just feel totally powerless."
Zhao Guogeng, vice president of Zhejiang Haijiu Battery Co., said the
company is covering the medical bills of lead victims. Authorities said the
factory's legal representative has been arrested and eight officials
disciplined. "This will never happen again," Zhang Linhua, spokesman for Deqing
County, declared last Thursday.
Maybe not there. But not three days later came a dispatch from a town 55
miles southeast of Mengxi Village: 103 children and 26 adults were found to
be severely poisoned by lead pollution from tinfoil processing plants,
according to China's official Xinhua news agency. Moderately poisoned: 494
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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