"Hidden killer"!
(Baonghean) - A few days ago, Vietnam Television broadcast a news report about 100% of children in Dong Mai village, Chi Dao commune, Van Lam district, Hung Yen province being poisoned with lead, causing many people to shudder with fear and worry. In fact, the incident was discovered and warned a long time ago, but until today, there is still no specific conclusion. The people themselves are still indifferent, not very impatient, and the government and functional agencies still cannot do anything more, when the people are not enthusiastic in cooperating to thoroughly resolve this incident.
Saying that does not mean that people do not care and worry about the health and lives of their children. But the main thing is that they do not fully realize the dangers of lead poisoning. Because this is a slow death, not immediately visible. Children infected with lead will have intellectual impairment, dwarfism, poor learning ability, and thinking disorders. For adults infected with lead, they often have loss of appetite, insomnia, headaches, anemia, poor health, memory loss and reduced productivity...
Not being aware, people are still subjective and contemptuous. Although many people know that the cause of this situation is because the whole village has been recycling battery scrap for more than 30 years. Due to manual labor, the soil, water, and air here are heavily contaminated with lead. The latest analysis results of the Institute of Occupational Health and Environment show that the soil, water, air, and food samples here have lead content many times higher than the permitted level.
Previous research also showed that the average level of lead pollution in the air exceeded the standard by 3.47 times. Foods such as vegetables and fish had lead levels exceeding the standard by 4.61 times. Children born and raised in Dong Mai therefore carry lead in their blood. Although the project "Intervention to reduce the risk of lead exposure in children in Dong Mai village" had been implemented before; many activities were organized such as improving the environment, building toilets, and raising awareness. The Chi Dao commune government also set up a project to separate the profession from the village, but until now many households still stick to production at home.
It is worth mentioning that, not only in the countryside, people lack information about the harmful effects of environmental pollution that they behave like that, but even residents living in big cities like Ho Chi Minh City are not yet fully aware of the harmful effects of environmental pollution. Therefore, in residential areas, there are still many production facilities that pollute the air and water sources. Recently, the City Center for Preventive Medicine has just announced the results of water quality testing in 7 districts including: Thu Duc, Binh Tan, Nha Be, Binh Chanh, Hoc Mon, Cu Chi and District 12. Accordingly, up to 96% of samples do not meet physical and chemical standards.
Looking more broadly, almost every locality has craft villages and facilities that specialize in processing scrap in a manual way, no different from Dong Mai village, with all kinds of waste, including all kinds of toxic substances, including lead, without any protective equipment. If a general survey is conducted across the country, there will certainly not be only one Dong Mai village. And the local authorities and relevant departments and branches have not paid much attention to the issue of environmental protection in craft villages, only stopping at the level of recommendations without many specific actions.
Meanwhile, according to statistics from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, in 2010, about 40 thousand tons of batteries containing lead metal were released into the environment. It is predicted that in 2015, this number will be nearly 70 thousand tons. We do not have factories or facilities capable of effectively treating this type of toxic waste, but all of it floats among the people and gathers at scrap collection and recycling points. All of it follows the water and seeps deep into the ground, polluting the water source and then "appears" in food and drinking water, poisoning many people. In the next few years, this number will certainly increase significantly. Just look at the amount of electric motorbikes and electric bicycles imported en masse due to their low cost thanks to the use of lead batteries that have appeared everywhere from urban to rural areas, and you can immediately imagine its not-so-distant consequences. That is a huge source of lead contamination for humans.
The problem is that not only the people but also the government and sectors need to be fully aware in order to clearly identify that "hidden killer" in order to have ways to prevent it and propose timely preventive policies.
Duy Huong
