A BATTERY manufacturer in Henggang Subdistrict, Longgang District, promised all employees a health check Monday after the Daily Sunshine reported that over 20 of its workers were suffering from lead poisoning.
The company will also pay for the medical treatment for workers found to have a high blood lead content, according to the general manager of Shenzhen Yidian Battery Technology Co., identified by the paper as Song.
But the workers, who had previously received no medical treatment for their condition, worried there would be nowhere to claim treatment expenses as the company was due to relocate, the Daily reported Monday.
I was fired by the company for violent conduct, said Wu Jia an, a former worker at Yidian Battery who reported the matter to the Daily. But the real reason is that they don t want to be held responsible for my high blood lead level.
Wu worked at the company for seven years from December 2003. He began showing symptoms of blood poisoning, including dizziness, fatigue and weight loss, in June this year.
Wu was diagnosed with a high blood lead level by Henggang People s Hospital in Longgang District, along with several other colleagues with the same symptoms.
A number of my former colleagues with high blood lead levels were dismissed or forced to resign from the company, said Wu.
According to national standards, the normal blood lead content for workers in lead-using industries who are older than 15 should be no higher than 400 mcg per liter.
The lowest blood lead content among the 22 workers at Yidian Battery was found to be 446.5 mcg per liter, with the highest reaching 855.3 mcg per liter.
The workers showed the Daily a list of 88 names of workers, all of whom they said were affected by lead poisoning.
To date, 22 workers had signed statements demanding the company provide medical treatment for their conditions.
The statement said the company had sent only a few workers to a private hospital in Shaoguan City, Guangdong, but there was no proper treatment.
We were sent to Shaoguan Metallurgical Plant Hospital on Aug. 2 where we were put on a drip for over two weeks, said Song Ronghua, but nobody is cured.
Shenzhen Yidian is the biggest battery producer in China, with more than 1,500 employees and four subsidiaries across the country.
A manager at Yidian, who declined to be identified, told the paper the company provided health checks for workers every year and nobody had been found with high lead levels in the blood.
But then he said the company had spent hundreds of thousands of yuan providing medical treatment for 34 workers after they reported the condition in August.
Yidian s HR manager, identified as Zheng, said the company should not have accepted the diagnoses results. Only the results of the occupational disease hospital are valid, he said.
Seven out of eight workers we sent to hospital had normal blood lead levels.
Wu said there had been no health checks during his seven years with the company.
The Longgang District Health Supervision Office said the health authority was investigating. (Tina Chen)
