Smelter 'poisons 2000 villagers'

HONG KONG - Two thousand Chinese villagers are being treated in hospital for lead poisoning which they say was caused by a local smelting plant, the South China Morning Post said.

The villagers, including 300 children, had travelled from their northwestern province of Gansu to a hospital in Xi'an in neighbouring Shaanxi because hospitals near their three villages had insisted they were fine, the newspaper said, quoting the local Huashang Daily.

"We don't trust local hospitals because they said our lead concentration levels were normal, so we travelled to somewhere further away," Liu Jiangtao, from Hui county, was quoted as saying. "Everyone from our village has gone there."

One county officials said only two villages were close to the lead smelter and the county was still probing how many were poisoned. Another said only two villagers had been found to be sick and the smelter was shut down last month.

- REUTERS