BEIJING, Aug 20 (Reuters) - A group of Chinese parents living near a manganese smelter in Hunan province, squared off with police after children were found to have high levels of lead, state media said on Thursday, the second such protest reported this month. The rash of lead-poisoning cases has underlined growing tensions between local governments and residents over pollution, often by poorly regulated plants with ties to local government. About 1,000 villagers blocked a road and flipped a police car on the night of Aug 8 in Wugang city to protest against toxic substances releashed from a nearby unlicensed manganese smelter, the China Daily said on Thursday. Western Hunan is rich with metals and with severely polluting smelters. Nearly 100 children in the area were diagnosed with lead poisoning, while other 600 were waiting for their test results, the paper added, citing local officials. "Test results, so far, show that 80 percent have excessive lead in their blood," Liu Zhongqi, party chief of the Hengjiang village, where the smelter is located, told China Daily. 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. [ID:nPEK92601] Protests against pollution are increasingly common in China, although the police normally try and nip them in the bud before they become violent. In other cases, officials show up and mollify residents with promises of financial or other aid. Protesters on Monday broke into a smelting works they blame for the lead poisoning of hundreds of children in northwestern province of Shaanxi, smashing trucks and tearing down fences. More than 800 hundreds of children living near Shaanxi's Dongling metal smelter have dangerous amounts of the heavy metal in their blood and 174 are so sick they have been admitted to hospital, state media reported. The Dongling smelter, which had suspended lead smelting since early August, stopped its coke production lines after the protest. (Reporting by Yu Le and Lucy Hornby; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
Residents carry food rations from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) following prolonged drought at camp in Laikipia, 290 km (180 miles) east of Nairobi, August 18, 2009. The Kenyan ...
