Oct 31, 2007 Singapore St. Times online

Pollution toll: China birth defects rise staggering 40%

By Tracy Quek, China Correspondent

BEIJING – THE number of Chinese babies being born with visible birth defects has surged 40 per cent to about 300,000, a government report said, and officials said pollution could be the cause.

The rate of visible deformities among newborns in severely polluted China – home to 16 of the world’s 20 dirtiest cities – has leapt from 104.9 per 10,000 births in 2001, to 145.5 per 10,000 last year. And when defects which cannot be seen, such as heart problems, are taken into account, 1.2 million, or 6 per cent of the 20 million children born annually in China, are affected, a trend that threatens to hobble the country’s socio-economic development. These startling statistics were revealed by Mr Jiang Fan, deputy head of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, in a recent speech at a conference in south-western Chengdu. Driving home the severity of the point, he said this meant that ‘a baby with birth defects is born every thirty seconds’, and that almost one in every 10 Chinese households is affected. China’s rate is dangerously near the top end of global figures.

The World Health Organization estimates about 3 per cent to 5 per cent of children worldwide are born with birth defects.

Mr Jiang said almost a third of the affected babies would die, 40 per cent would be ‘disabled’, while a third would be able to enjoy ‘a fairly good quality of life’, as long as they received early treatment. Beijing has already decreed that pollution emissions must be cut by 10 per cent by 2010, but the commission’s findings can only add urgency to the country’s efforts to clean up its polluted air, water and soil.

Otherwise, as Mr Jiang said, the upward trend of birth defects will have serious consequences for China’s socio-economic development.

He said that caring for affected infants already costs ’several hundreds of billions of yuan’, and warned that if the problem is left unchecked, China would ‘face the hidden danger of a loss of labour population’.

‘Birth defects directly affect the rise of China’s comprehensive national strength and international competitiveness, and the economy’s continued development,’ he added, calling on medical authorities to better educate potential parents and increase spending on prevention and screening.

Mr Jiang did not go as far as to blame the surge in birth defects exclusively on pollution, saying there are many and complicated causes.

But an official with Shanxi province’s family planning authority, a major coal-producing region and one of China’s most polluted areas, told state media this week that statistics for his province demonstrated a direct relation between pollution and birth defects.

Mr An Huanxiao not only said that high rates of birth defects clustered around badly polluted areas in Shanxi, but also pointed to the fact that in eight of the province’s coal producing areas, the number of birth defects is clearly higher than the national average.

At the same time, however, Mr An said that poorer, rural areas and places with low education are producing higher than average rates of birth defects.

tracyq@sph.com.sg