Leading leaden lives

Choosing to leave town

Many residents near the chemical factory in Dapu township chose to leave town after news broke that many of its children were suffering from excessive amounts of lead.

Before October 2012, there were three families of 15 people living in a three-story apartment opposite the factory.

Only an 80-year-old grandmother was left in the apartment following news of the children's plight.

Hu Hongzhi took her three children for blood tests after hearing about the incident and found that the lead in the blood of her children had excessive levels of 280 to 290 micrograms per liter.

She then took her children to Shenzhen, Guangdong province, where she and her husband worked.

"I have no choice. We live just opposite the factory and are those who suffer from its greatest impact. We do not dare open the doors and windows. There is dark dust in the air, which stained even the clothes we washed soon after they were hung up," said the 42-year-old.

"Even though we closed the doors and windows, the smell often choked us and woke us up at night," she said.

Hu's sister-in-law, Luo Dan, who also lived in the apartment, moved her family to a rented house far from the factory.

"My two children often cried and said they had stomachaches. I thought it was because they had roundworms in their stomachs," said the 27-year-old.

Luo took her children for blood tests at the hospital and found that lead levels in their blood hit 268 and 247 micrograms per liter. After hospitalizing the children for 12 days in October 2012, she moved to a rented house.

Cheng Chun'e lives about 20 meters from the warehouse of the factory and she is also the only one left in her two-floor apartment after her husband died in 2013.

Her elder son moved his family to a rented house after they came back from Shenzhen in 2012 and her younger son chose to work out of town, both because of the environment.

Many of Cheng's neighbors also moved away.

"I have almost no neighbors left," the 63-year-old said.

Wen Xu, Cheng's elder son, said the situation at night could be worse than during daytime as the factory tried to continue production "secretly".

"We coughed a lot and were unable to sleep", said the 34-year-old.

Wen also said half of the more than 1,000 pigeons his father raised died suddenly because of the dust from the factory.

- Hou Liqiang and Feng Zhiwei