COAL MAJOR CHINESE HEALTH PROBLEM
FreeMarketNews.com - April 17, 2007
Coal, long a major world pollutant, has not lost that status in rural China. There, families use coal to heat and cook. In an AFP news brief a victim of coal related illness was described: "Zhang Huaixiang's thin wasted frame dangles from his wooden crutches, his bowed legs swelled by a disease contracted from lifetime reliance on coal."
Zhang is a victim along with 42 million Chines of fluorosis causes by taking in too much fluoride found in coal. When rural people dry food stuffs in their homes more of the fluoride is ingested.
Ma Wenbo, director of the health bureau, said that installing chimneys would end much of the pollution as well as using dried manure for fuel.
Wenbo estimated that while only 4,000 have severe skeletal fluorosis in Guizhou children as young as six are affected.
Overall China's national health ministry says that 100 million are at risk.
SOURCE:
http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=38889