In China, 24 children in an eastern town have been hospitalized after dangerously high levels of lead were found in their blood. The children, from nine months to 16 years old, suffered from moderate to severe lead poisoning with more than 250 micrograms of lead per liter of blood. The deputy director of the Provincial Children’s Hospital’s micro-elements testing laboratory said this. He added several more children are waiting to be admitted.

Most of these children were living in the town’s Xinshan Community, where two battery plants operated nearby. Some parents of the sickened children said there was only a road separating the community and the plants, where lead processing occurred. However, environmental protection authorities have ordered that no residential community should be built within a radius of 500 meters from a battery plant. The local government has shut down the plants and has been sending the town’s children to the provincial capital of Hefei City to test their blood lead levels.