Chinese provinces have begun shutting lead smelters for environmental checks, after hundreds of children tested for high levels of lead in two separate cases this month. At least three lead smelters in Henan province and two in Shaanxi province, with a combined capacity of about 6 percent of China's annual production, were ordered to temporarily halt operations in recent days, officials said. The closures came after parents protested at a lead and zinc smelter operated by Dongling Group in Changqing, Shaanxi Province, and at a manganese smelter in Hunan this month. China's pollution and lax product safety standards have long been a source of tension and unrest, particularly when residents of pollution hotspots - dubbed “cancer villages” because of high disease rates - feel they are being ignored. Lead poisoning is endemic among villages near Chinese smelters.
