Shanghai Shuts Plants in Lead Probe

By JAMES T. AREDDY

According to <The Wall Street Jourrnal>

    SHANGHAI—A Chinese environmental-protection agency ordered production suspended at two factories, including a Shanghai battery plant operated by U.S.-based Johnson Controls Inc., after detecting elevated lead levels in some area children.

    The Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau said in a statement Friday it ordered the closures after determining through blood tests that a "small" number of children had been exposed. It said environmental checks will be performed but offered no timetables.

    The agency's brief statement followed several days of complaints by neighbors of the plants, located near the city's Shanghai Pudong International Airport. The state-run Xinhua new agency on Thursday cited a statement from Shanghai's government that 25 children had been sickened, of whom 12 were hospitalized.

    The environmental agency's closure notice primarily cited emissions from a plant run by Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls, one of the world's largest makers of lead-based batteries for vehicles. The statement said the plant uses lead ingot and sulfuric acid as raw materials, while "lead smoke and dust caused during the production were emitted after being treated by the filter." It stopped short of blaming the company for illegal pollution.

    Dana Yu, a Shanghai-based spokeswoman for Johnson Controls, said in an emailed response to questions Friday that the company takes very seriously concerns about potential exposure and is working with Shanghai authorities. "However, we have no reason to believe we are the source of the issue," she said.

    The Environmental Protection Bureau put less emphasis on the second suspended plant, run by Shanghai Xinmingyuan Automobile Accessory Co., though it said the company isn't licensed to work with lead. "We did not know that we cannot produce products with lead without a license," Li Zhiliang, a manager at the factory, told the Associated Press.

    China has struggled for years with lead poisoning, often cited by analysts as an example of the side effects of the country's fast industrial development. The government has taken measures including targeting some lead smelters for closure, but the problem remains acute.

    Around four years ago, costume jewelry exported from China and popular with children made headlines around the world and prompted multiple recalls by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission when it was found to contain lead. In China, media have also reported citizens being poisoned handling so-called e-waste, old computers that are imported and torn apart for their scrap metal. State media have started to question the health effects of cheap and trendy electric bikes that are powered by big lead batteries.

    The latest case in Shanghai follows several days of complaints, many of them published on Sina Corp.'s Weibo, a popular Twitter-like microblogging service, that children tested positive for lead during health checks this month at the beginning of the school year. In one widely distributed message, a user named COSTA_0007 declared "The environmental pollution has harmed our children!" and claimed some neighborhood children had 500 micrograms of lead per liter of blood—100 micrograms being considered elevated, above 200 poisoned and above 450 severe, according to standards adopted by China's Ministry of Health in 2006.

   Studies show even slightly elevated lead levels can lead to permanent neurological damage and reduced IQ, particularly in children.

    In her statement, Ms. Yu of Johnson Controls said lead emissions from the company's Shanghai facility are about 1/7th the amount allowed under China's national standard, while its lead discharge through wastewater treatment facilities averages about 1/10th China's national standard. "Our plant employees are regularly tested to ensure their blood lead levels are sufficiently low," Ms. Yu said in the statement.

    The 13-year-old Shanghai plant, acquired by Johnson Controls in 2005, is one of three battery factories it has in China and around 30 world-wide. Just this week, the company announced plans to build a new $100 million battery plant at a China location it hasn't yet identified for an advanced lead-acid battery meant to allow a vehicle's engine to start and stop quickly.

    —Yang Jie contributed to this article.