Blog 13_Industrialisation or Health?

Surely we would all agree that industrialisation and modernisation are good for a country. However, everything comes with a cost. As we all know, China is a rapidly growing country where factories are replacing rice paddies, labour is supplanting agriculture. China's currency, yuan, is appreciating rapidly (and the government is trying hard to keep it low). This all comes with a cost - pollution.

BBC News reported that 24 school children in eastern China have been hospitalised with lead poisoning, and at least 200 children in that area have elevated lead levels. According to Zhang Gong, director of the hospital's child care department, excessive amounts of lead in the blood can cause damage to the digestive, nervous and reproductive systems, and also stomach aches, anaemia and convulsions. All of this resulted from the China's position as the world's greatest producer of lead for batteries, thus the plethora of battery factories in the area.
This is a tragedy; all those hospitalised are between the age of nine months and 16 years. Most of our brain is developed in our adolescence, so this is an important stage of our lives. If lead pollution ruins our brains, we might never recover from the damage - this would create a problem in China. If many of its younger population, the future working force, are impaired, what's there to expect of the country? Even if there are many function factories built, no further advancement can be achieved, because everything has been paid in return and nothing is left.