China uses fear to hush up poisoned children

At first the villagers could not understand why their bouncing babies turned into small children who refused their food and complained of feeling ill all the time, agitated one moment but listless the next. Then, early this summer, so many of the youngsters began to sicken after playing in fields of corn around a giant lead smelter, that the puzzlement turned to foreboding. "We took the children to local hospitals but every time the doctors told us there was no problem," said one mother. Eventually, one father became so worried by his son's convulsions that he telephoned a relative in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province in the centre of China, which has first-class medical facilities. The family boarded a bus and made the 100-mile journey to Xijing hospital, where tests established that their baby had severe lead poisoning. When they returned, panic spread through the villages. It was the start of a scandal that would explode onto the front pages of Chinese newspapers, only to vanish because of censorship, intimidation and a local cover-up that has now extended to restricting tests for the children.