'Green' lightbulbs poison workers
Hundreds
of factory staff are being made ill by mercury used in bulbs destined for the
West
From The Sunday Times
May 3, 2009
Michael Sheridan, Foshan
WHEN British consumers are compelled
to buy energy-efficient lightbulbs from 2012, they
will save up to 5m tons of carbon dioxide a year from being pumped into the
atmosphere. In China, however, a heavy environmental price is being paid for
the production of “green” lightbulbs in cost-cutting
factories.
Large numbers of Chinese workers
have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs. A surge in foreign demand, set off by a
European Union directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has
also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment.
Doctors, regulators, lawyers and
courts in China - which supplies two thirds of the compact fluorescent bulbs
sold in Britain - are increasingly alert to the potential impacts on public
health of an industry that promotes itself as a friend of the earth but depends
on highly toxic mercury.
Making the bulbs requires workers to handle mercury in either solid or liquid form because a small amount of the metal is put into each bulb to start the chemical reaction that creates light.
Mercury is recognised
as a health hazard by authorities worldwide because its accumulation in the
body can damage the nervous system, lungs and kidneys, posing a particular
threat to babies in the womb and young children. The risks are illustrated by
guidance from the British government, which says that if a compact fluorescent lightbulb is broken in the home, the room should be cleared
for 15 minutes because of the danger of inhaling mercury vapour.
Documents issued by the Chinese
health ministry, instructions to doctors and occu-pational
health propaganda all describe mercury poisoning in lighting factories as a
growing public health concern. “Pregnant women and mothers who are
breastfeeding must not be allowed to work in a unit where mercury is present,”
states one official rulebook.
In southern China, compact
fluorescent lightbulbs destined for western consumers
are being made in factories that range from high-tech multina-tional
operations to sweat-shops, with widely varying standards of health and safety. Tests on hundreds of employees have
found dangerously high levels of mercury in their bodies and many have required
hospital treatment, according to interviews with workers, doctors and local
health officials in the cities of Foshan and
Guangzhou.
Dozens of workers who were
interviewed on condition of anonymity described living with the fear of mercury
poisoning. They gave detailed accounts of medical tests that found numerous
workers had dangerous levels of the toxin in their urine. “In tests, the mercury content in my
blood and urine exceeded the standard but I was not sent to hospital because
the managers said I was strong and the mercury would be decontaminated by my
immune system,” said one young female employee, who provided her identity card.
“Two of my friends were sent to
hospital for one month,” she added, giving their names also. “If they asked me to work inside the
mercury workshop I wouldn’t do it, no matter how much they paid,” said another
young male worker.
Doctors at two regional health centres said they had received patients in the past from
the Foshan factory of Osram,
a big manufacturer serving the British market.
However, the company said in a
statement that the latest tests on its staff had found nobody with elevated
mercury levels. It added that local authorities had provided documents in 2007
and 2008 to certify the factory met the required environmental standards.
Osram said it used the latest technology employing solid mercury
to maintain high standards of industrial hygiene equivalent to those in
Germany. Labour lawyers said Osram,
as a responsible multi-national company, was probably the best employer in a
hazardous sector and conditions at Chinese-owned factories were often far
worse.
A survey of published specialist
literature and reports by state media shows hundreds of workers at
Chinese-owned factories have been poisoned by mercury over the past decade. In one case, Foshan
city officials intervened to order medical tests on workers at the Nanhai Feiyang lighting factory
after receiving a petition alleging dangerous conditions, according to a report
in the Nanfang Daily newspaper. The tests found 68
out of 72 workers were so badly poisoned they required
hospitalisation.
A specialist medical journal,
published by the health ministry, describes another compact fluorescent lightbulb factory in Jinzhou, in central China, where 121
out of 123 employees had excessive mercury levels. One man’s level was 150
times the accepted standard. The same journal identified a
compact fluorescent lightbulb factory in Anyang,
eastern China, where 35% of workers suffered mercury poisoning, and industrial
discharge containing the toxin went straight into the water supply.
It also reported a survey of 18 lightbulb factories near Shanghai, which found that exposure levels to mercury were higher for workers making the new compact fluorescent lightbulbs than for other lights containing the metal.
In China, people have been aware of
the element’s toxic properties for more than 2,000 years because legend has it
that the first emperor, Qin, died in 210BC after eating a pill of mercury and
jade he thought would grant him eternal life.
However, the scale of the public
health problems in recent times caused by mercury mining and by the metal’s
role in industrial pollution is beginning to emerge only with the growth of a
civil society in China and the appearance of lawyers prepared to take on
powerful local governments and companies. A court in Beijing has just broken
new ground in industrial injuries law by agreeing to hear a case unrelated to lightbulbs but filed by a plaintiff who is seeking £375,000
in compensation for acute mercury poisoning that he claims destroyed his
digestive system.
The potential for litigation may be
greatest in the ruined mountain landscape of Guizhou
province in the southwest, where mercury has been mined for centuries. The land
is scarred and many of the people have left. Until recently, the conditions were
medieval. Miners hewed chunks of rock veined with cinnabar, the main commercial
source of mercury. They inhaled toxic dust and vapours
as the material seethed in primitive cauldrons to extract the mercury. Nobody
wore a mask or protective clothing. “Our forefathers had been mining for
mercury since the Ming Dynasty [1368-1644] and in olden days there was no
pollution from such small mines,” said a 72-year-old farmer, named Shen. “But in modern times thousands of
miners came to our land, dug it out and poured chemicals to wash away the
waste. Our water buffaloes grew stunted from drinking the water and our crops
turned grey. Our people fell sick and didn’t live long. Anybody who could do
has left.”
The government shut all the big
mercury mining operations in the region in recent years in response to a fall
in global mercury prices and concern over dead rivers, poisoned fields and
ailing inhabitants. But The Sunday Times found that in
this remote corner of a poverty-stricken province, the European demand for
mercury had brought the miners back.
A Chinese entrepreneur, Zhao Yingquan, has paid £1.5m for the rights to an old state-run
mine. The Luo Xi mining company used thousands of
prisoners to carve out its first shaft and tunnels in the 1950s. “We’re in the last stages of
preparing the mine to start operations again in the second half of this year,”
said a manager at the site, named Su.
At Tongren,
a town where mercury was processed for sale, an old worker spoke of the days
when locals slaved day and night to extract the precious trickles of silvery
metal. “I worked for 40 years in a mine and
now my body is full of sickness and my lungs are finished,” he said.
Additional reporting: Sara Hashash
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6211261.ece