Made For America! Trading jobs --- for infant brain cells.
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Lead Poisoning of Children: American Manufacturers in China: Jobs and Brain Cells Lost
Recent news out of China shows environmental standards are lax or nonexistent in protecting those living in the neighborhoods and rural areas surrounding factories. In at least three recent incidents tests showed children being poisoned by lead. Lead poisoning cause’s brain and nerve damage. I should say that again: lead poisoning causes brain damage. It delays or retards development in the young. This third round of recent lead poisoning of Chinese children is providing a glaring view of what the world of manufacturing and industry gets away with in China. No wonder they are all clamoring to manufacture in Asia. They can poison the environment without any thought of corporate responsibility.
“A routine blood test conducted on 1,000 children in Kunming, capital city of Yunnan, found 200 who had “excessive” levels of lead in their bodies, the China Daily reported today, citing hospital director Wu Ling.
China has struggled to implement health standards at plants, with excessive lead found in toys and melamine-tainted milk and pet food killing children and dogs. Two smelters in Shaanxi and Hunan provinces were closed after more than 2,000 children were found to have “above-normal” levels of lead in their blood, according to Xinhua News Agency reports this month.”
Do you recall that Mattel Inc. in 2007 recalled 21 million Chinese-made toys because of excessive lead content? They did. Is lead poisoning still occurring in China? Absolutely it continues to occur. Should we be concerned? I'm not sure what we can do about the problem in China except consume less and test whatever we import. The issue of jobs lost to China never leaves my mind. I believe it's possible to manufacture safely in this country.
Around Christmas I asked a friend who owned a manufacturing plant in Iowa if labor costs were really the reason American manufacturing was being transferred to places like China. He said no that the EPA was by far the biggest reason. In other words manufacturers are going someplace else to produce products to avoid being environmentally friendly. They are seeking to pollute the planet without regard to any legal liability. They want a place where they can freely poison the surrounding population without legal responsibility.
He further explained how difficult the logistics were to have products made and shipped from so far away. I believe this friend because he knows what he’s talking about and owned manufacturing plants in several different states in America.
For those who do ship jobs overseas is it simply easier to profit from poisoning Chinese children than children on American soil? Is this an acceptable premise?
“Authorities shut the Wugang Manganese Smelting Plant in Hunan province on Aug. 13 after tests showed as many as 1,354 children living near the smelter had excessive lead levels, Xinhua said Aug. 20. The Wugang government ordered more than 100 plants to be overhauled, Xinhua had said.”
I grew up in Bristol, Rhode Island and worked at the American Tourister factory. My relatives worked for years at the Converse factory. My mother for a time worked at the Premiere Thread factory. Manufacturing was a way of life and created jobs and an economy that supported families with a decent standard of living. The factories in Bristol are mostly gone overseas. Do we want the jobs back? Yes we do. Do we want to poison our children to get them back? Absolutely not.
I believe people want to build things; they want to do a day's labor with tangible results. Create those jobs and Americans will fill them. Maybe not our kids because we've made them fat and lazy. We've SuperSized them if you will. Fat, happy and lazy.
I was in school from 1959 until 1981. That’s a period of some 22 years and never once did I see a course that taught how to create environmentally friendly manufacturing jobs. If colleges and universities want to know how to survive they need only examine the concept of work and job creation as a major course of study. Imagine that a position with the function of creating viable jobs.
So here is my question for today. How do we create these jobs without ruining the environment while maintaining healthy profit margins for the owners?